


All Our Meanwhiles

by Sadisticsparkle (sadisticsparkle)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Happy, Alternate Universe - Space, Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers Family, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Bickering, Fix-It of Sorts, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, IN SPACE!, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, M/M, Minor Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Secret Identity, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-05-02 08:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadisticsparkle/pseuds/Sadisticsparkle
Summary: When Steve Rogers wakes up in 1994, he finds a man with his face living his life and married to the woman he loves. Lost and alone, he wanders through life like a ghost, until he sees a flyer for the Stark Space Squad.When all he has is a preordained past and no hope for the future, the choice is obvious. He will go to the stars, because he has nothing left on Earth.(Or: The Space AU where all the Avengers are somebody's disaffected niece.)





	1. I died so I could haunt you

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! The premise of this fic is, basically, 'what if the Steve from the universe canon!Steve ends up in GOES TO SPACE WITH TONY AND ALL THE AVENGERS?'. So I'm going with the 'canon!Steve ended up in an alternate reality' theory.
> 
> Thanks for the MCU Discord for the plotting help!
> 
> Thanks for fujurpreux, laurus_nobilis, neverthelessthesun, ExcElsiorbOi and Yngvolkayno for cheer reading and betaing.

Before even opening his eyes, Steve knew something was off. The bed was too soft, the smell too septic. He heard the faint bustle of a city but it was way louder it should have been even if there were no distant bombs and no alarms blaring. When he finally opened his eyes, he was welcomed by the sight of a blank, off-white ceiling. He was inside a building then.

He sat up on the bed and analyzed the room. It looked like a normal hospital room, but there wasn't any screaming and he couldn't catch the scent of blood, vomit, and gunpowder he expected. Maybe he had died. Maybe Heaven was a bland hospital room where nurses fussed over you and nobody let you do what you wanted. So no, it could not be that. Capture, then… or rescue. He shook his head. No. He couldn’t hope for that, not when his last memory was the cold trapping him and the ice growing all around him. He set his feet on the ground — it was cold and he realized he was barefoot, wearing pants and a T-shirt — and stood up next to the bed.

If he had been captured… His eyes scanned the room searching for something blunt and breakable, something he could use to stage an escape. He knew that his blood held secrets everybody wanted and it was his duty to avoid that. The room was almost empty — except for the nightstand, the bed and a chair that looked promising, so he walked towards it. He hoisted it above his head, ready to break the window when somebody coughed right behind him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a man said and then chuckled as he had said something funny.

The voice sounded odd yet familiar. He turned around with the chair still over his head. The stranger was… At first, Steve didn't want to believe it. But the broad shoulders, the muscles, the steely blue eyes, were too identical. Too familiar. He was older and his hair had started going gray around the temples, but he could recognize his own face. He wondered how old he was. Had the serum slowed that down? He had never dared to imagine what it’d do to his aging. It had always felt like too much of an illusion, as if imagining a life of peace was tempting fate.

“You don't fool me. I know this is a disguise," he said, the chair still hoisted over his head.

The man laughed. He had to be a HYDRA agent or else it… it wouldn't make much sense. At all. The man wasn’t wearing Captain America’s uniform — instead, he was wearing a dark blue one with a simple white star in the chest.

“Oh, I wish it was that simple.”

Steve didn't move an inch. “Explain. Now. Where I am?”

“New York.”

When the man spoke, the blinds opened and he saw the New York skyline, peppered with unfamiliar, taller, gravity-defying buildings he had never seen standing right next to achingly familiar sights.

“That can’t be," he muttered under his breath. He put the chair on the floor and leaned his weight on it.

The man walked towards him, with his hands outstretched. “You wanted an explanation - it’s 1994. Things have changed a bit.”

“How? Did I time travel?”

The man laughed again, but there was no joy in it. Steve's fists were starting to itch.

“Something like that," the man finally said.

Steve walked closer to him and stared him down. The man didn't budge, didn't flinch.

“Tell me the truth. Now.”

Something was hidden in the stranger's face — nostalgia, maybe, but it looked more like envy.

“You were asleep in the ice. For fifty years.”

“Then who are you?”

"You must know by now."

Fine. If the man wasn't going to say it, he would. "You're me. But how?"

"I think you need to sit down."

“No. I'll sit down when I want to. Explain, now.”

The man sighed. “In a few years, you’ll find time travel technology. You’ll be able to go back to just after you went into the ice. Pick everything where you left off. Move on with your life.”

There was only one thing that could mean — Peggy.

“You…”

“Yes. I… we married her. We’re happy.”

He imagined her. Their date. Them swaying to music, lost to everything else. The wedding and how gorgeous Peggy must have looked. Maybe a small house somewhere. Perhaps even children that weren't as sick as he had been growing up.

“Can I see her?”

The man hesitated. "It's been 50 years. She's not the same. Life changes a person."

"You just said it. We're married. She'll want to see me."

"Yes but… you're not married yet."

"What? I can see the wedding ring in your hand."

"Exactly. In my hand. The Peggy you marry… she's the Peggy in my past. I know it's confusing, I don't quite understand it myself, but…"

"Still, she must want to see me. Know I got out of the ice."

Dread mounted in his chest. What if she didn't? What if she was gone already? What if he was late?

"I can't stop you, can I?" said the other man.

"What do you think?”

 

 

He sat down on the bed again and waited for Peggy to get there. He looked over the room again — the window was a possible escape route if he had to leave in a hurry. Whoever the man was, he did look and act like him, but something bothered Steve. The man seemed to be lying. What was he hiding? And how could he find that out? His thoughts were interrupted when he heard the tell-tale noise of Peggy’s heels on the floor. It hadn’t changed — it was still decisive, with all the weight of Peggy’s personality in each step. But he wasn’t ready to see her and his breath caught in his throat when the door opened and Peggy stood there, with tears filling her eyes.

Her dark eyes were the same he had seen just hours ago. But he couldn’t avoid seeing that she was older now. She had stray gray hairs and happy wrinkles all around her face. At least some things hadn’t changed — she still had that air of distinction and command Steve had fallen in love with. The other man was behind her, but he stayed back, near the door, while she entered the room.

“Hi, Steve,” she said with a voice that was wearier than he remembered. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

“Neither have you.”

“Oh, don’t flatter me,” she said, but she smiled. ”I know I've changed. We all have.”

_No, I haven't_ , he thought. He hadn’t had time to change, time to become the man leaning against the door, with his sad eyes and gray temples. He took a step forward, but she flinched a bit and couldn't hide it quick enough.

"I was… hoping we could get our dance now," he said and regretted his words immediately. She had had that dance, hadn't she? With the man on the door, a long time ago. This wasn’t his time.

Peggy looked back and exchanged glances with his other self. No words, but Steve knew there had been something said there, some secret he wasn't privy to.

"Oh, darling, whenever you want."

"You promise?"

"Of course I promise. I know we have it, eventually. I've already done it, remember?"

"No," he said. "I don't remember"

She looked aside. “Do you want… we can talk about…”

About their lives together. Steve’s chest was filled with questions — had they had children? Were they happy? What else had happened in the world? He could learn everything there was to know about… about his life and then he could wait for it to happen. He imagined that and shuddered. “No, I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” he said.

Peggy's perfume hanged in the air for hours after she left, like a ghost. That was what he was, he thought, watching New York skyline lit up at night. A ghost who had no place there, because somebody else was already there, taking up all the space. What could he do other than wait for his life to happen? The man had said he couldn’t travel back, not yet, but what was he supposed to do instead? Go back to war? There was some war raging somewhere, probably. Meet people? Was he allowed to? Did people know who the other man was?

He hadn’t bothered to look at the neat pile of things at the feet of his bed, but he knew what was there — everything he had been found with. His suit. His shield. His compass.

 

 

He tried to organize the information he had learned already. It was 1994. The other man had returned in the early 50s and he had been told this was SHIELD’s headquarters. SHIELD was apparently where the other man and Peggy worked to keep the world safe. The war was over — it had been over for almost fifty years. They had won. He had too many questions, but most of all he was lonely.

He turned away from the window, turned his back on that bright neon New York and tried to sleep, tried to dream of a lost time.

He was already awake the next day, an hour after dawn, when the other man came into his room with his breakfast. He was almost glad — he was very hungry and at least the other man knew what he liked. The man silently put the breakfast tray on the nightstand and Steve grabbed the cup of coffee and sipped on it. It was rich and fragrant, the kind of coffee he had never tasted before. While he drank it, he looked up and stared at the man.

"This isn't a social visit," he said. He didn't know much about the future, but he knew himself, and no matter how settled the man tried to look, there was a hint of nervousness in the way his shoulders were pinched.

“There’s something else I didn’t tell you," the man said, not looking at him in the eye.

“How many secrets do you have?"

The man shrugged. It was an admission of guilt. He tried to picture himself, carrying himself like his man did — moving in the careful way somebody used to the shadows moved, and talking with an all-encompassing air of loss.

“I can't keep this one away from you. It's about Bucky.”

“… what about Bucky?”

The man sat on the bed and smiled at him. It was the first time the other man’s smile looked genuine, instead of like some desperate attempt to placate Steve.

“Bucky’s alive.”

Something that teetered between joy and bewilderment exploded inside Steve's chest, but then he was also full of suspicion. Was this a way to keep him under control? To give him everything he had ever wanted? A promise of a life with Peggy, his best friend back and a hard-won peace?

“What? Alive? How… I saw him fall. We didn't… there was nothing… How can he be alive?"

The other man stared straight at the wall. "HYDRA had captured him. It took me years to track them down and rescue him like he deserved,” he said, with the rehearsed cadence of somebody who had told the story many times. “I wanted to bring him back to us. To let him have the life he should have had."

His mind was a whirlpool of questions and what-ifs. HYDRA had taken Bucky? What had they done to him? How had they found about it? Had Bucky… died and come back or never died at all? Where was he now? Had he also moved on with his life, like Peggy had?

"Can I … is he still…?"

The other man patted his shoulder. Steve flinched and moved away.

"He’s retired these days, but I asked him to come here. He's waiting for you."

Steve almost ran into the other room, wanting to outrun his trepidation and his doubts. The other room was even less personal than his own room — harsh light illuminating gray concrete walls. There was a black leather sofa in the middle of it and a dark-haired man was sitting there. Steve came to a halt and willed himself into calmness. He couldn’t cry. This was a happy moment — Bucky hadn't changed as much as …the other man had. His hair was long and he looked bigger, yes, and he was also wearing gloves inside the room, but the sad smile and the expressive eyes were the same Steve remembered.

“Hi, Steve," Bucky said and Steve crossed the room with a few strides and hugged him.

Bucky was startled enough that he went rigid for a second before hugging back.

"I can't believe you're alive. You… I'm so happy you're here. I thought… I thought I’d never see you again."

"It's all thanks to you. You rescued me twice."

No, he thought, he had only rescued Bucky once. But he would rescue him eventually and all would be well, right? This was how it was going to end. They’d be together again. They’d move on from the war. He took a step back. “You don’t look…”

“You aren’t the only super soldier around now.”

"Bucky…" the other man said, with a hint of a warning in his voice.

"Sorry, Steve, you know how I get about matters of national security."

The other man laughed at some private joke. "Sometimes I wish you had been a goat farmer…"

"I don't know why you're so convinced I'd enjoy it."

The rhythms of the conversation were practiced enough that Steve knew there was a shared wealth of memories and love there that didn't belong to him. Nothing did anymore. Besides his own memories of rollercoasters and bad dates, of running around streets that didn’t exist anymore and of fighting a war that was now memorials and history books, stood another friendship, another man who knew Bucky as he was now and not as he had been.

“I… you don’t work here?”

Bucky shook his head. “I didn’t want to fight anymore, I’m not like you.”

“Are you…?”

He wanted to say “happy”. He wanted to say “safe”. He wanted to ask if he was home.

“Yes… and you will be too, Steve. Trust me.”

“Yes, I know,” he lied, knowing nobody in the room would believe him.

 

 

SHIELD released him from the hospital room after a week or so and after he had threatened to run away if they didn't. They set up a small apartment in a part of New York he had never lived in and filled it with books about the future and music from his own era. They even gave him a gym membership. Peggy and Bucky had tried to visit again, but each shared anecdote, each joke led to another anecdote Steve didn't remember. They remembered a different man Steve hadn't become yet. He had lost so much time, skipped so many of their lives, and every second they spent together was a horrible reminder of what he had lost. So he gave them excuses, told them he had things to do and they were nice enough to pretend they believed him.

Life settled into a routine. He spent his days drawing the new city, punching bags and reading up on the history he had had a hand in shaping, even if he didn’t remember it. SHIELD paid for the bags he broke and for his rent, so he didn’t even need to work. They started filling his fridge with groceries once they realized Steve hated this brave new world and how everything tasted and smelled. The only place he enjoyed was the gym — it looked old and decrepit. Out of place, like he felt.

There was only one other regular — a man with only one eye, who never seemed to do any training.

“Tell them I’m okay,” he said one day sitting down next to the man with only one eye.

To his credit, the man didn't even try to deny being in SHIELD, assigned to keep an eye on him. SHIELD controlled his life and all he knew is that the other man, Peggy, and Howard ran it. He hadn't bothered to ask more.

“You’re not, though. You look like a mess and act like one too."

That startled a smile out of Steve. “What? Not even bothering with an introduction?”

“You haven’t told me your name either.”

“Steve Rogers. Thought you knew that already.”

"You shouldn't introduce yourself like that. It's suspicious, knowing there’s another one of you running around."

"Less suspicious than not telling me yours."

"I'm Nick Fury. Call me Fury. Everybody does."

"Pleased to meet you, Fury."

It wasn’t even a lie. It was nice, to meet somebody new, somebody with no shared history. Somebody who was willing to make jokes and wasn’t going to treat Steve with kid gloves.

"Is the beard an attempt at disguising yourself?"

He shrugged. It hadn't been a decision — he had stopped shaving because he was tired of looking at his own face in the mirror every morning. “You’re here to check I don’t kill myself?” he asked instead.

“Not really. We know you don’t since you come back eventually.”

He hated that. His life wasn’t his, it was somebody’s else. He was tied to the tracks, waiting for life to hit him, with no choices he could actually make left.

"Then why?"

"Just to keep you company."

 

 

He met Howard a week or so after moving into his new apartment. He had wanted to refuse at first, but Howard didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t his fault Steve felt like the Ghost of Christmas Past. They have talked on the phone one or two times and Howard had told him he wanted to invite everybody, to have a Howling Commandos reunion with all the survivors. Steve had refused. He wasn't ready for that. Maybe he'd never be ready for that, especially knowing that not all Howling Commandos were alive. He’d be there and wonder if it wouldn’t be better if he had died too. So he had promised instead to visit Howard’s house and talk about the old times and lie about how well he was settling into the future.

When the car Howard had sent to pick him up showed up, he realized how rich Howard truly was. He had always known it, but it had never hit him, not during the war where all of them were equally likely to die and Howard was another overworked scientist and not a captain of industry.

It wasn’t a long ride — Howard still lived in New York, in some impressive high rise building with an immaculate foyer and a fancy elevator. Howard’s home itself was as immaculate and as expensive as the exterior. It had a modern style, but it wasn't in-your-face about it and Steve approved of the paintings that hung there. They showed good taste, like the pure white sofa. He wondered how they kept it clean and looking like something out of a catalog, before sitting down on it. Howard sat in front of him, with a weird smile. He had changed the most out of all of them - his wild dark hair was gone, he had become more... distinguished. He looked everybody imagined a billionaire that had the fate of the world on his hands on a regular basis would look.

“You understand I can’t introduce you to my wife. Matter of national security.”

“There's a lot of those."

Howard snorted. "Life got complicated after the war."

They stayed in silence, but it wasn’t comfortable.

“They’d all be happy to see you, Steve.”

But they wouldn't, not really. They'd hug him the way you'd hug a distant relative you have forgotten and then go talk to the other man. The man that had visited them for years. Who had shared their joys and their tears, who had been at their weddings and had helped move out after a divorce. He wasn’t that man.

"They see me all the time already."

"You need to understand…"

"I understand. I understand perfectly. I just wish I didn’t."

There wasn’t much left to say after that. On his way out, he stopped to look at the pictures of Howard’s family – the other man was there in a few of them, younger and looking almost like him. Sometimes there was also some dark haired boy. He wondered what his name was and how old he’d be now. Howard hadn't mentioned him, even if he had talked about his wife. Just more things he didn’t know about.

The dark haired boy wasn’t the only child Steve wondered about. Neither Peggy nor the other man had mentioned any children but still… did he have a family now, a family he couldn't see? Grown children? Maybe even some grandchildren? It ached, the doubt gnawing his insides. What was he supposed to do? Wait until the machine was ready, until people figured out how to time travel? Freeze his life? Why hadn't they left him in the ice instead of making him go through this simulacrum of a life?

There was only one person who could answer him. The man that had made all the decisions that had left Steve stuck as a plaything of fate. It was as simple as telling Fury he had questions and he knew who could answer them in the middle of one of their conversations about the 20th Century and all the things Steve didn’t understand. Fury was helpful during those conversations — so far, all he had said had been true. So Steve would punch things and then he’d ask Fury about whatever change had ambushed Steve during the week. Fury never talked about himself, but that suited Steve just fine. He wasn’t going to ask Fury to trust him, not when Steve didn’t trust him himself.

So he told Fury and then he waited until the information reached up through the chain of command. It took a week for the other man to show up at his apartment, wearing civilians clothes instead of the dark uniform he had been wearing the first few times. It looked incongruous somehow. It reminded Steve of the life he was supposed to be living.

He didn't wait before talking. No need for pleasantries.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“How this goes. What I have to do to go back.”

The man shook his head and sat on Steve’s sofa. “I can’t tell you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“When I was… you, I wasn’t told. I can’t change the past. This has to happen the way it did, I have to let it happen the way it did.”

“I'm not buying it."

“You need to. Stop clinging to… Don’t you understand? Most people don’t get second chances like this.”

“Is it, really? A second chance?”

“It is. You’ll go back and live the life you were always meant to live. You just have to wait for a bit.”

"And what do I meanwhile? Stop living?”

The other man said nothing. His face was stoic and closed off as if he was the one suffering there, as if he was the one being asked to stop living.

“Give me a hint, at least."

The other man shook his head.

“I can’t.”

“So what I do then? What can I do besides waiting?”

“Join SHIELD, like I did.”

“And follow my own orders? No.”

Especially when he didn't trust himself.

“I'm not stupid enough to expect you to follow orders. I know you don’t know how to do that.”

“So you know…”

“You’re going to say no, yes. I’ve lived through this already, remember?”

The other him smiled. He didn’t buy it.

“At least now we both are tied down to our fate. If you were me, before, then you know what you’re supposed to do too. Don’t you understand how I feel like a puppet? Like I have no choice and no idea of what I'm supposed at the same time?”

It seemed as the other man had never thought about that. “Yes. That’s… I’ve made my peace with that. I like to think about the happiness I got in exchange was worth it.”

To Steve, he didn’t look happy, but… the entire world didn’t look happy. The other man and the city and Howard looked weary, tired, dirty. Maybe it wasn't them — maybe it was Steve tainting everything.

“I sure hope so, because right now I’m not.”

The other man stood up. “Look, you can make your own choices. It’ll all end up well. Don’t… don’t stay here. There’s a whole world waiting for you outside your apartment.”

Yes, there was a whole world waiting, but there was also a clock ticking down to when he’d have to go back to Peggy. He wished he knew when that was going to be but at the same time, he resented the certainty. He hated knowing that he had already made all his choices and knew what the outcome was. He had an assured happy ending but all he could focus on was that somebody else had written the script. Steve walked him to the door and didn’t bother to say goodbye.

After the conversation, he couldn’t stay in the empty apartment. Nothing there was his. He walked around the city, letting his feet take him wherever they wanted and seeing how much it had changed. How much people had changed too — not just the clothes or the technology, but the way they walked, the words they used. Nobody recognized him. The beard and the haircut were a good enough disguise and since his other self had grown old in the eyes of the public, people barely remembered his face as a young man, his original sacrifice or his original war.

The world had changed too much and he had changed too little, but at least it meant that when he bought coffee, the ‘barista’ treated him like a normal person. With strangers, he felt as if he was made of flesh and bone instead of promises and memories. He didn’t want to be… near his past, constantly reminded of what he had missed, but as long as they were there, he’d be tempted.

He read each of the announcements posted to the advertising board in the café. Most of it was… normal — people asking for roommates, guitar classes, language classes, scams. But a flyer with a crude drawing of a rocket and block letters saying _Daring crew needed! Recruitment for Stark Space Squad open!_ caught his eyes. It seemed like some sort of… science fiction club, but the Stark connection was intriguing. After wandering enough, he went back to his apartment. He grabbed his phone and for the first time, he called Peggy. She had given him a phone number and she was the only one he trusted.

“Steve? Is something wrong?”

“No, I just… had a question. About the Stark Space Squad?”

She sighed. “Oh, that. Yes, I know about that.”

“Can you send me some information about it? It seems… fun. I didn’t want to ask Howard.”

She laughed. He liked the sound of that laughter. He didn’t like the sound of the other man’s voice in the background, asking Peggy what was so funny. “Never, ever ask Howard about it. But yes, I’ll get you some intel on it.”

“Thanks, Peg,” he said and hung up before she could ask how he was doing.

 

 

The next morning, he walked to the gym after breakfast. He needed to get his blood flowing, to remind himself he was not dead. He was out of the ice now. That wouldn’t change. When he arrived at the gym, Fury was already there and there was a SHIELD file on the bench. He knew better than to pretend he didn’t care, so after putting his things in the locker, he walked to the bench and opened it.

The first thing on the folder was a picture of a young man with wild dark hair, wearing a T-shirt with STARK SPACE EXPLORATION printed on it. He looked painfully young and the earnestness in his dark eyes was impossible to hide, even beyond the big sunglasses the kid was wearing. The next thing on the file was a very serious-looking blueprint of a spaceship.

“Howard didn’t say anything about this.”

Fury calmly sat down on the bench. “It’s not his project. It’s his son’s, Tony. Doesn’t talk to the old man much.”

The dark haired boy, probably. Old enough to design spaceships already, when he hadn’t even existed when Steve had gone into the ice. “Why aren’t they talking?”

“The weight of expectations.”

Steve snorted. “I can understand that.”

“I bet you can,” Fury replied, with his _I know you know that I know you know but you don't know I know_ voice. He used it a lot.

“What’s he recruiting for?”

“Exactly what it says on the tin. Mission to deep space.”

“And SHIELD thinks it’s for real?”

“We _know_ it’s for real. After what happened with… let’s just say we have proof there's a much bigger world out there than we thought. Stark wants to be the first man up there.”

Interesting, Steve thought. They had proof there were aliens? Nobody had told him that. Nobody seemed to know about it, either. He had checked — like he had checked if spaceships existed or if he could buy a flying car. Except for the polio vaccine, the future had always disappointed him.

“If this is for real, he sounds like a smart man.”

“Smarter than his dad, at least Howard seems to think so. You seem to think so too — you’ve always said he was going to change the world.”

God, did his other self had to get himself into everything? “He knows the kid?”

“Something like that.” Fury sounded weird. "It's complicated."

"How is it complicated?"

“He doesn’t like you. At all."

“Good, at least we have something in common.”

Fury was smart enough not to comment on that. Steve was grateful — he didn’t want his self-loathing to be intruded upon. It was something that belonged to him — a bitter anchor that reminded him he wasn't the other man, not yet.

“He’s recruiting smart, driven people with a wide range of abilities. People that… people that can leave the world behind,” Fury said.

The meaning was obvious. “I’m… can I keep the file?”

“Sure. It’s a copy anyway.”

He put the file with his things and gave a half-hearted attempt at training, but gave up halfway through. He wanted to go back to his apartment and think about the first thing in the future that had almost excited him. While he rode the subway, he wondered if any of the other passengers felt as confused as he did.

When he got back to his place, he sat down in his table and scattered the file’s contents on top of it. There was the flyer, more of blueprints, some financial reports, a few news clippings and the personal file on Tony Stark. He checked the financial reports first — the backer was some West Coast scientist named Hank Pym, who had worked at SHIELD before. Was that how Howard was helping his son, funneling money to the enterprise through an old friend? The file on Tony told him little. An MIT graduate, a genius, a party boy, a rift with his father. There was a section written by the other man - _incredible potential. Good heart under the bluster._ He wasn’t sure if he could trust his own judgment.

He took his phone but then decided against calling Peggy or Bucky. They'd try to make him stay out of obligation or fear. But he couldn’t be afraid, not when he knew the outcome. He’d survive the trip because he had to. And besides… he looked out of the window and pretended he could see the stars. What was there, waiting? He had read so many novels about it, so many comics about aliens and adventures in faraway planets. Nobody would know his name. He could be somebody else until it was time to go back to his own life, until the tech was ready and he was able to go back to his past.

The past. All he had was a preordained past and no hope for the future. He could go to the stars. He had nothing left on Earth.


	2. I'll see you somewhere down the line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which 'Grant Stevens' goes to an interview and does a farewell tour.

The hallway was deserted, which did nothing to calm down his nerves. Why weren’t there any other candidates? Why was the whole place so beige and who had thought wood paneling was a good idea? And why was the bench so uncomfortable? Was it a test?

He looked at the resume on his hands and tried to memorize the facts again. Grant Stevens. Born 1967 in Brooklyn, New York. Two years in college, majoring in Visual Arts. Had left for military service and then a long stint in SHIELD’s STRIKE team until tragedy struck. Almost like the real thing, give or take a few dates and a few details. There was also two glowing letters of recommendation. One from SHIELD’s director herself and another one from Howard Stark, praising him for his bravery, commitment and resourcefulness. He hadn’t told them what it was for, at least not yet. No sense in upsetting them because maybe he wouldn't get the job.

At least, he knew he had done everything he could to ensure that. He had looked up advice about current hiring practices and he had read up on the science and the history of space travel exploration, including the Space Race and all the latest developments. There had been a big qualitative jump two years ago, for mysterious reasons Steve was very suspicious about. He wanted to know what had gone on, but Fury had proven to be very resistant to his charms and Steve suspected he delighted in refusing Steve’s curiosity.

“Next,” a female voice said.

The office looked Spartan at first sight, but then you noticed how comfortable the chairs were and that the art had been chosen with a great, keen eye… before you realized again that the paint on the walls was peeling and one of the windows was broken. Did Tony Stark have enough funding for this? Behind the desk, there was a brunette lady with an unimpressed look.

“Sit down, Mr… Stevens.” He followed orders and tried to dispel the odd notion that she suspected something was up. The identity was designed to pass any background check, so she couldn’t know who he was, right? “Welcome and pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise, Ms….”

“I’m Maria Hill, HR department for this project. I’ll to go straight to the point — we’re… impressed by your background and if I’m honest, we don’t understand why you’d join us.”

“I want a new role where I can grow through challenges that force me to think creatively.”

“Mr. Stevens, can I call you Grant?” She didn’t wait to hear his answer. “That’s bullshit. You’re not interviewing for a position in Accounting. You’re interviewing for a chance to explore new worlds and probably die trying.”

He smiled ruefully. “You want the truth then? It’s nothing deep. I’ve always wanted to see space.”

It was true. He had dreamed of Martians and rockets, once upon a time. Now he dreamed of nothing.

“With your credentials, you could’ve applied to NASA, then. Not this risky operation.”

And if he did, his cover would be blown and they would have bigger issues. No. A risky, fly-by-night operation was the perfect place for the spare Steve Rogers.

“I don’t want to wait and...” He thought that if he lied, she’d know so he told the truth instead. “… nobody would miss me.”

There was no horrified expression, no half-hidden pity, just a curt nod. “Seems like a perfect match, then. I’d hire you today, but first, you have to pass our medical tests and… well, the boss has to meet you. He’s very particular.”

Steve nodded and tried to look calm. He wasn’t scared of being found out, not with the beard and not when Tony had grown up with the other, older version of himself. But he didn’t trust himself with his reaction — what if Tony was like his father? How could he hide any glimpse of recognition? How could he see Howard’s adult son and not let the wonder in his face show?

 

 

But before he had to face Tony, there was another step. For the medical tests, Hill gave him an address in New York and a name — ‘Stephen Strange’. Well, that sounded normal and not ominous at all, but despite his odd name, Strange turned out to be a recent graduate from medical school with the bedside manner of an ogre, working out of a small office. He was probably the cheapest competent doctor they had found.

“Oh, you’re one of the space crazies,” Strange said instead of hello, after Steve finally mustered the courage to knock on his door. It had taken him a while — he had never liked doctors that much.

“ _Aspiring_ space crazy.”

Strange waved him inside his office. “Right. The tests.”

The small place was full of training gear, but the tests were nothing new for Steve — reflexes, strength, stamina. He aced them all, as he knew he would.

“Wow, I’ve never seen anybody in such good shape before,” Strange asked, looking at his charts. “Did you say you worked for SHIELD?”

“Used to. Not anymore.”

“Hm. And… no weird experiments or anything?”

“No, sir. Just a good diet and a lot of exercise,” Steve said, giving Strange his best Man With a Plan smile.

Strange raised an eyebrow, but then told him he had passed his tests. “They’ll be lucky to have you.”

“Oh, you’ve met them?”

Strange shrugged. “Yes. They’re all like you — young and wide-eyed. I don’t understand why you’d join this… insane venture.”

“Probably have nothing better to do,” Steve said with fake cheer. It seemed to grate on Strange.

“Seriously. You’re all crazy.”

 

 

It took them a few days to call him back to their office after the tests. Steve spent those days drawing spaceships and imagining how aliens might look — would they be humanoid? Or have a lot of tentacles? Or both? In his mind, they had the garish colors of the magazines of his childhood. Back then, Bucky and he would save whatever money they could scrounge up and spend it on pulp magazines. Steve had liked them, but Bucky… Bucky had loved them with all his heart and dreamed of the wild adventures trapped in those pages. With a smile, he drew Bucky, as he had been back then — handsome, strong, young —, meeting with some aliens outside a spaceship. Maybe he could send it to Bucky. Would he get it or had he forgotten all about their childhood dreams?

He drew alien cities that came out looking like the New York he remembered and alien princesses with the dark eyes of Peggy Carter. His past kept invading the future, like a miasma, so it was good he had to leave the apartment and his memories behind to go meet the boss. The office was the same but this time, instead of Hill, there was a very young man behind the desk. He was sprawled on a big office chair that hadn’t been there the last time. Steve felt a bit of pity about the kid's sad attempt at facial hair.

Tony Stark, looking both younger and older than Steve had expected. He didn't look much like his father, especially not like the man his father was now. Tony had Steve’s resume in his hand and was thumbing through it with a distracted look.

“Grant Stevens. Good name. Like a 60s movie star,” he said, finally looking up at Steve. His eyes were dark, brown and expressive, with delicate eyelashes.

Steve shrugged and wondered what the 60s had been like. Tony hadn't been born yet if he remembered right. “It’s the only name I have.”

“Well, yes, of course it is. How many names do you think I have?”

“No idea.”

Tony sat up on the chair and put the resume back on the desk. At that moment, when he mustered all his spoiled charisma to mask his wounded pride, Steve could finally see Howard in Tony's demeanor. “You don’t know who I am?”

“Why should I?”

He knew who the kid was, but he wasn’t feeling generous.

“Because I’m going to be your boss.”

“Isn’t that Hank Pym?”

“That’s… no, he’s just funding us and I wonder how you know that.”

“You want me for security, don’t you? It’s my job to know things.”

“But it’s not your job to sass me.”

“No, sir, that’s just a hobby.”

Tony Stark rolled his eyes and kicked him out of the office.

Three days later, he got a call.

“You’ve got the job. But keep the sass for days off only,” Tony said to him and then hung up.

 

 

A messenger came with a brown envelope the next day. Inside, he found the contract, more forms to fill out and an information packet. It had very scant information, but Steve's main questions were answered. The mission would start in two weeks and they would spend six months charting space and trying to establish if there was alien life. Crew members were promised a huge paycheck, life insurance and a place to store their belongings. The files included a brief introduction to the members of the crew and a very small description of the ship.

It also said he’d get more information later on. Classified information you wouldn’t want printed, maybe even an explanation of what had happened in 1992.

 

 

The next day, a black car was waiting for him outside his house, at the crack of dawn. The man driving it said nothing during the drive, so Steve was devoid of distractions. He tried to keep his mind blank, to avoid building up expectations but he couldn’t help but imagine where he was going. Maybe some white building that defied gravity, covered in glass. Maybe a large complex full of people, rolling out on the grass. But whatever his expectations were, they were dashed when after an hour or two of driving, they stopped in front of a dilapidated hangar in the middle of nowhere. The only other building was a small concrete box next to it.

Tony Stark was outside of the hangar, leaning against an expensive red car and wearing sunglasses and a perfectly tailored suit, a striking image of indolent wealth. Steve wondered if he was supposed to be impressed instead of annoyed by it. Tony wasn’t alone, but Steve hadn’t seen the two people flanking him before. One of them was a big guy wearing sunglasses with half the easy charm of Tony. A bodyguard, by the looks of it. The other one was a redhead holding a stack of paperwork and a lot of stress. A secretary, then, meant to herd her boss. Steve didn’t envy her job, not with a boss like Tony.

Steve’s driver said nothing, not even when Steve waved him goodbye when he got out of the car.

“Well, I’m happy you’ve decided to join us, Mr. Stevens,” Tony said, taking off his sunglasses.

“I’m… glad I’ve been picked. I want to thank you for…”

Tony waved his hand. “Fury recommended you. That was good enough for Hill because I think she’s actually working for him. Now, for people I _know_ are working for me, let me introduce you to the wondrous Pepper Potts, greatest assistant in the world and over here, the magnificent Happy Hogan, driver and bodyguard extraordinaire.”

The fond looks he was giving them made it look like they were more friends than employees, but maybe that was how rich people worked. Maybe they thought money not only bought your loyalty, but also your love.

It wouldn’t work on Steve.

“Pleased to…”

“Potts, Hogan, this is Mr. Stevens.”

Steve pictured himself for six long months, being known as ‘Stevens’. It made him sick to his stomach, but he couldn't be 'Steve', not for a long time. “Call me… call me Grant.”

“Okay, good, then call me Tony.” Tony flashed the bright and fake smile of a matinee idol. “We’re going to get really familiar with each other during the next few months…”

“I hope none of us gets cabin fever.”

Tony waved his hand again. “We won’t, not when we have the whole universe to explore.”

“Do you have any specific idea of which part of it we’re exploring?”

“Yeah… that’s what I needed to talk to you about. You always ask good questions, Grant. I like that in a man.”

While Potts and Hogan waited outside, Tony guided him into the hangar and into a very small office with no windows but with a very impressive lock. It was empty except for two chairs and a file cabinet. Steve didn’t wait until they were seated before asking. “Is this about aliens? And about what happened in 1992?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed as he sat on his chair. “Wait, you’ve been… You know? You were SHIELD. Were you involved?”

“No, but I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m starting to see why you came so… highly recommended,” Tony said. “And about that… what do you know of my father?”

“I met him once or twice before a mission. Everybody says he’s a real patriot.”

Tony snorted. “And what do you say?”

Steve looked away. He had read a little about Howard’s life after the war. “I have a different view on patriotism.”

Tony looked satisfied. His face was like an open book, the complete opposite from his father. Was it a difference in nature or just the passage of time? Would Tony learn how to play it close to the vest, his sincerity buried under the burden of hard decisions and dark secrets?

“Is that why you left SHIELD?” Tony asked.

“Something like that. Why are we talking about my life? You still haven’t told me anything about aliens.”

“Right! Aliens! In 1992, we got incontrovertible proof that intelligent alien life exists.”

“How?”

“A woman showed up - Carol Danvers, a missing Air Force pilot. Turns out she had been kidnapped by an evil empire from beyond the stars and was here looking for some shapeshifting terrorists that turned to be more like shapeshifting refugees. It was a mess, SHIELD covered it up like they cover everything up, I got my hands on the star charts Danvers left Fury. Then I also got my hands on a cool alien ship Danvers gave her… best friend and got to work. We couldn’t miss this opportunity just because some spies got antsy about planetary security. Science, knowledge… it’s all waiting for us out there.”

“That sounds like a longer story.”

“And a boring one that I don't feel like telling, so…” Tony pushed a file into his hands. “Read this. In here. You can’t take it out because blah blah, matter of national security, blah blah, secrecy, blah blah. I’ll be waiting outside, I need some air.”

Tony stood up and left the office. The door locked behind him. That was bad policy, Steve thought. Tony was too trusting and too naive. What if Steve stole the files or took pictures of them? They had to talk about it if Steve was going to work security for the mission.

But that’d be later — now he had files to read. He started with the SHIELD reports of the incident. There had been several battles, two species of aliens and a very familiar looking cube. Carol Danvers’ file made him wonder why she had left, so soon after coming back to a place she had forgotten it was home. Where was she now? Was she still alive, amongst the stars?

The stars… They had turned out to be way less cold and empty than it seemed. SHIELD had tried to compile as much intel as possible, but the results were sparse. He memorized how the Skrulls worked — his paranoid side already working overtime on how to spot shapeshifting aliens. He read over Kree weapons specs and over the general idea SHIELD had on space politics. There were rumors of living planets and eternal beings, of wars spanning galaxies and colorful cultures in even more colorful planets. From the glimpses SHIELD had seen, there was a universe without end out there, waiting for humans to join it.

Steve couldn’t wait.

“Done?” Tony said when he let Steve out half an hour later.

Steve nodded. He had already memorized the entire thing.

“That was quick. I hope you read it and didn’t skim it.”

“I’m a fast reader,” Steve said and shrugged.

“Okay, not really buying it and there may be a test later on, but before that, I have somebody else I want you to meet.”

He almost dragged Steve through the hallway until they reached the hangar. There were holes in the ceiling, dust on the floor and rust all over the walls but in the middle of it, shining chromium, laid a sleek wondrous ship with the clean lines of a hawk midflight and the metal polish of the future. There was the cockpit in the front, like the sharp beak of a raptor bird. Then there were two ‘wings’ before the ship tapered off. Was that the cargo bay, then? He couldn’t wait to explore it — there had been no ship schematics in his information packet.

Tony put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Meet the Excelsior.”

“It’s…”

“I know. It’s beautiful! Only a genius could have designed it, if I say it so myself.”

Tony was as humble as his father had been at his age, but his voice had an edge of vulnerability to it. And the truth was that it did look like the work of a genius, the work of an intelligence that was far away from everybody else’s, busy building a reality from what most people thought was an illusion.

“Can we…?”

“We can’t tour it yet. The interior is not finished and I want it to be a surprise, but I thought you needed to see I’m serious about this.”

“I never doubted that,” Steve replied with a grin. He didn’t stop grinning during the entire ride home.

 

 

He barely slept that night and when he did, he dreamed of traveling in space with the Howling Commandos. Bucky was there, looking younger, just like Peggy did. In his dream, he walked across the ship to the cockpit. Outside the window, there were the stars but then he saw his reflection — that wasn’t his face. He didn’t have those small wrinkles or the gray temples. He woke up with a start and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Instead, he went back to one of his history books. He wasn’t going to take them with him — too suspicious — so he had little time to fix the gaps in his knowledge. When dawn broke, he showered and left the apartment for his farewell tour.

There was no doubt about who should be the first person to know he had gotten the job, so there was no doubt about his first stop of the day. When he got to the gym, Fury was already there, sitting in one of the benches. Steve sat down next to him and took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, but before Steve could speak, Fury did.

“So you’re going to space.”

Of course Fury already knew. He wondered if Tony was right and Hill did work for him — he’d tell Tony about it later. Or maybe he’d let Hill keep her secrets if it turned out she was keeping his.

“Yes. I’m off to see the stars.”

And wasn’t that swell. Just a kid from Brooklyn, exploring an unending universe filled with dreadful wonders.

“Stars aren’t the only things out there.”

“Really? What else is there?”

“You know. Planets. Space beasts. And plenty of… interesting people. Good people too.”

The files had whited out the names of the agents involved in the Danvers incident, but Steve was sure Fury had been one of them now. “Plenty of bad people too, then,” he said instead of inquiring about it. There was no need. Maybe he’d get to ask Danvers herself.

“You could say that, but I think it’ll do you good. You’ll get to punch people instead of bags.”

“I sure hope so.”

He had missed that, in fact. Action. Adrenaline. Knowing that what he did mattered. And yes, punching things that moved and fought back. The punching bags got boring after a while, just like his life on Earth had grown drab and empty too. At least space was going to be different, even exciting. A brand new life in brand new worlds with brand new people. A brand new Steve, leaving the old Steve behind to turn to dust.

“I wish I could go with you,” Fury said.

“You could. SHIELD’s pay probably sucks anyway.”

“Somebody has to mind the fort, Rogers.”

He pictured Fury keeping his eye on things like he had kept an eye on Steve. He imagined the other man, working in some big SHIELD office, reading reports and picking recruits and then going home to Peggy. “Well, there seems to be plenty of people already.”

“It’s never enough. And maybe it’s not the right people.”

There was a world of meaning hidden below the surface of Fury’s words. Was SHIELD doing its job? He thought of Peggy. Howard or the other man could have lost their way, but she never would. She’d always be the right person for that particular job.

“I can’t stay.”

“Hey, never said _you_ were right for the job. You’re too old for it.”

 

 

He assumed that everybody important would hear about his decision from Fury. It would have been easier to take himself out of the picture for a while, to vanish without a trace, but he also wanted to say goodbye face to face. He wasn’t sure if he was going to see them again, at least like this — if he was going to time travel during his space trip, it would explain why the other man hadn’t seemed to know what he was supposed to be doing on Earth. Maybe he was meant to leave it behind and come back earlier instead of later, to go home the long way round.

His second stop was Bucky’s apartment. He had avoided visiting Bucky’s place before, expecting a warm home and maybe a girlfriend or a wife or children now grown, but it was as impersonal as Steve’s was. There were only a few books and there weren’t any pictures, not like there were at Howard’s house. There was a lone TV — Steve hadn’t bothered getting one for his apartment because he still found the concept weird — and the kind of sad sofa you picked up from the curb. It wasn’t a place where you lived, it was a place where you crashed when you were too tired to keep going.

“Hi, Bucky,” he had said and Bucky had invited him in. Steve had sunk into the sofa. He had the drawing of Bucky in space in one of his pockets, as a peace offering or an apology for leaving Bucky behind again. He hadn’t been brave enough to bring it up.

“Are you hungry, Steve?”

“Hm. I guess so?”

“Good. I was just about to make dinner.”

Bucky had gone to his small cramped kitchen and started rummaging through his cupboards when Steve had finally said it. “I’m gonna go to space. For a while.”

Bucky hadn’t spoken, for some minutes, and kept cooking. His shoulders had sagged and his jaw had tightened, but then he had laughed. “So… you’re going to be Buck Rogers.”

Steve joined him in laughter and for a second, they were kids again, with a firm hope for a better future instead of moldy regrets from the past. “Maybe. Maybe we won’t even take-off and we will explode in mid-air.”

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“You know it can’t happen. I have to come back somehow.”

“Right,” Bucky said with a slight nod. “Life insurance or something like that, I guess. But still… Steve, don’t… don’t do anything stupid.”

Bucky wasn’t looking at him, but he seemed weary in that moment. Sadder than Steve thought he’d be.

“How can I, when I’m leaving all the stupid with you, Buck?”

They had eaten, after that, and avoided talking about it anymore. They talked about their life before the war, instead — the people they had known and the places that everybody else but them had forgotten. Bucky barely mentioned what had happened after 1944 and Steve wasn’t eager to ask about it. It wasn’t right to pretend Bucky’s life had been as blank as his time in the ice, but it was a comforting lie.

Before leaving, Steve tucked the drawing of Bucky in space under the TV. At least something of his would remain behind.

 

 

He wasn’t asked too many questions when he strolled into SHIELD headquarters and up towards Howard’s office. What did the guards know? Did they know he was Steve Rogers or had they been fed lies too? Maybe SHIELD's security was just that bad. He was thankful when the elevator ride was over — he hoped his brain would stop worrying too. Howard’s office was on the last floor, behind an impressive dark door.

Howard was sitting on his big glass desk, talking on the phone when Steve got in. “Sorry, Ambassador, I’ve got to…” Howard said and hung up on whoever that was. Beyond Howard’s desk, Steve could see the city flourishing with new buildings, taller and taller, closer to the sky. A modern Babel lost in its own cacophony.

“Hi, Howard. I needed to talk to you.”

Howard waved a hand. “I know. You picked Tony’s foolish little club over working for SHIELD. Can’t say I was expecting that.”

Steve went to the window and looked down. There were people down there, but they were high enough they looked like ants. It explained how… detached Howard seemed, if this was where he spent his days. Away from everything, but making decisions that affected everybody else. Tony’s offices had been smaller, closer to the ground. “Well, his offer was more interesting. I’ve never punched aliens before.”

“You can do that at SHIELD.”

He shook his head. “That won’t be happening.”

It would be too fraught. Too tangled up with his history and with the history of the other man, full of gaps and secrets Steve hadn’t learned yet. And he wasn’t even sure SHIELD was doing what it should be doing, if they were protecting the world like it needed to be protected. He heard Howard stand up.

“You’ve made up your mind, then.”

He turned around and faced Howard. “I have. Your son knows what he’s doing.".

“Jury’s still out on that one.” Howard sighed. “Take care of him, will you? He’s a reckless idiot, but he’s a good kid.”

“I will, Howard, I promise.”

When he extended his hand, Howard hesitated but then he took it. “Good luck, Steve. We’ll be waiting for you to come back.”

Then the phone had rung again and Steve had excused himself. He was relieved it had been a short conversation. That would give him a little time before he had to face the next conversation, a little time to gather himself and pretend he was calm. But of course, that was more than he was going to get because Peggy was waiting for him outside Howard’s office. It was to be expected — she had always kept him on his toes. The sun was bright outside and standing in sunshine, Peggy was as beautiful as a spring morning and as wistful as an autumn sunset.

“Hi…” she said. “I need to… can we talk in my office?”

He wondered what the guards thought of this before he realized no guards were around. He needed to stop underestimating Peggy — she wouldn’t let the guards suspect anything. Her office wasn’t far and he wasn’t surprised by the way it looked — as big as Howard’s, but with less luxury and less cutting edge modern design. She sat down on her chair and this time, Steve sat down too.

“I’m… glad you’ve made this decision,” she said and she wasn’t lying because her smile was warm and genuine but Steve knew her enough to guess at the hidden sadness. “I can’t believe you’ll be our first man in space. We couldn’t ask for anyone better.”

“I’m not sure, Peg, I’m just…”

“Non-sense. You’ll leave a great impression of humanity. Nobody could represent us like you will.”

He smiled, embarrassed. She still believed in him so much, after such a long time. It was… he didn’t know how to feel, because he didn’t believe in himself anymore.

“I’ll… I’ll miss you,” he said. Yes, talking to her was painful and seeing her was a sweet ache, but it had been grounding to know she was near, living her life in the same city, breathing the same air. He wasn’t entitled to anything more, but he’d still miss her. It wouldn’t be the same, far away in the coldness of space.

“Oh, I’ll be waiting for you, remember? No need to miss me,” she said, caressing his cheek. He wanted to lean in, to steal a kiss, but it would be foolish. Somebody else was kissing her and she wouldn’t miss _him_. The other man was there already and he would still be there when he left. No matter how much Peggy’s absence hurt Steve, no matter how much he wished to be near her, she wouldn’t notice he was gone because he had been gone for fifty years already.

He leaned back, away from her caress. “Yeah, Peg… you’re right. We’ll… we’ll meet again soon enough.”

“I can’t wait,” she said.

Steve didn’t want to wait, but it was all he could do on Earth. That’s why he had to leave, so he could stop waiting.

 

 

The last conversation would be the hardest — so this time he waited until he was calm enough, before going to the other man’s office. The office was small and cramped with files and boxes and framed pictures of Peggy, but it was also empty. He asked one of the guards — the other man was overseeing training a few floors below and the guard’s expression told Steve that was a normal occurrence.

He waited outside the training room until the recruits left — so far nobody had recognized him, but it wouldn’t be hard to put two and two together if they saw him next to the other man. The weirdness that was his life had to be kept a secret, no matter what. People couldn’t know time travel was possible. If humanity learned of a way to get all the second chances and do-overs you could want, it would lead to disaster.

The other man left last. He was writing down something on a notebook. Notes on training, probably — promising recruits, changes to the training regime... He was so into it that he almost crashed against Steve. “Oh,” the other man said when he realized who Steve was. He took a step back. “Came here to…?”

“To say goodbye.”

“Yeah… that… that makes sense.”

Steve didn’t want to beat around the bush. He had a goal and no desire to spend more time with the other man than that was needed. “Is this… is this what happened?”

The other man crossed his arms and stared at the wall, avoiding Steve’s eyes. “I told you I can’t tell you that.”

“So I’m supposed to just know when to come back? Not to fuck up everything?”

“You can’t fuck up what’s already happened.”

“So this is what happened. You left Earth. You didn’t stay.”

“That’s… I can’t tell you that. You made a choice. That’s what matters.”

“Fine. Have it your way,” Steve said and walked past the other man. If he wanted to keep his secrets, Steve had no business with him anymore. He’d carve his own path and everybody else be damned, like he had always done.

“Wait. Is… is Tony Stark going to be there too? On the ship?”

Steve stopped. That was a weird question. Had this happened? Did the other man remember? “Well, it’s his project. Of course he’s coming. I haven’t met the rest of the crew yet, but I’m sure they’re all...”

“James Rhodes. Bruce Banner. Clint Barton and his wife and… and Natasha Romanoff,” the other man said, too quickly. This had been what had happened then, if he remembered the crew’s names that easily. Was this why he had been so emotional when he had mentioned Tony? The other man looked out the window. “It’s a good crew. Take good care of it and… and whatever Tony does, try to understand him. He’s a better man than either of us will ever be.”

 

 

He spent the week before he was supposed to join the crew wandering around New York, sketchbook in hand. He wasn’t able to draw its new profile so instead, he tried to portrait the people. He sketched the way people in suits hurried across the street or old ladies waited for the subway. There were hints of the past — the clothes wouldn’t be quite right or the cars would be a little too bulky — but his sketches breathed with the hidden energy of the city.

He didn’t start packing until the night before. The weight limit was pretty constraining, but whatever was left could be stored at the facility. At the bottom of his suitcase, he put a few pictures and a few mementos — his compass, his dog tags, a few sketches from the war, a picture of himself and Bucky from before the war — and then covered them with his neatly folded clothes. The packet had said there would be uniforms provided by Stark Space Exploration Inc., but they could pack civilian clothes too if that’s what they wanted and as long as they respected the weight allowed for each crew member. He didn’t take much — two pairs of pants, some shirts, a good leather jacket. Stuff he had always wanted to buy back in the day, but had never been able to afford.

Then he carefully packed a speed bag — the ship was small, but he still wanted to get some training done — and six months' worth of art supplies in the crate they had sent. The packet said there would be a library on board and to send any special requests to Hill, but he was sure that there wouldn’t be good quality art supplies on the ship. It had been a pleasure to shop for it and if he was going to go to space, he wanted to memorialize it in the only way he knew how.

After packing the art supplies, there was enough space left his crate for the shield, but not for the suit. He didn’t mind. The suit was bulky and outdated, but he couldn’t leave the shield behind. It could be useful and it was his favorite weapon, the only one that had come easily and naturally to him. He would have to find some way to smuggle it on board without explaining who he was.

When he closed the crate, he looked around to check if he had forgotten anything. The apartment looked the same as before he had packed because he had barely taken anything from it. He wouldn’t miss it and he wouldn’t miss the things he left behind. He wouldn’t miss this deformed, gargantuan New York. He wouldn’t miss anything. Everything that was there, he had already lost.


	3. Our living has just begun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve meets the crew!

That night, he slept like a log for the first time since he had… arrived in the future. No memorable dreams, no waking up in the middle of the night and no tossing around in bed. He woke up refreshed and hungry, so for his last breakfast in New York, he bought a bagel and some coffee. Then, he waited for his ride to arrive. It turned out to be a black car with a new, different silent driver showed up at his apartment to pick him up.

A week until take-off. He was going to spend it in the facility alongside everybody else. Would it be enough time to get to know the crew? Probably not. Even if he knew it was useless, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could he, when the ride upstate was quiet and peaceful? There was no chaos outside that could distract him from the chaos inside his brain. Would he make it back alive? Or would he be sent back in time without getting a chance to say good-bye again? Would he know what he had to do in the past? Or was it just a matter of following his gut? Why couldn’t he know? Because he’d change the past? He tried to sleep, but it was to no avail. The whirlpool of his mind wouldn’t stop.

After an hour or two of fretting, the car entered the facility. There was more activity now — trucks coming and going, cars parked in the driveway, a small cadre of mechanics and engineers opening crates and screaming at each other. It reminded Steve of Camp Lehigh.

Pepper was in front of the hangar, clutching a clipboard against her chest. Her hair was billowing in the air, looking gorgeous against the bright midday sun.

“You fixed your beard. Good,” she said and wrote something down on her clipboard.

He chuckled. “Had to make a good impression.”

She eyed him from head to toe. Steve didn’t know where to hide. “Trust me, you do. Now, let me show you to your room.”

“Is everybody here already?”

“Oh, not everybody. Half the crew has arrived, but Tony…” She sighed. “He’s in Vegas, something about one last hurrah.”

Did Tony expect to die out there or was it normal partying? Would that cause problems, once they were out there? He bit back his questions because it wasn’t his place to ask them. He had to trust Tony was up for the task of leading them — or he would have to step up himself.

Pepper guided him through the facility with a sure foot and the sound of her heels against the floor reminded him of Peggy. There wasn’t much to see, just the hangar and then the small concrete building next to the hangar that turned to be the crew quarters. It was the bare minimum and looked like it too. A beige communal kitchen with a table so small only four people could eat at the same time and a dark hallway that led to several cramped rooms with bunk beds. The showers weren’t much better — one for the women, two for the men. One of the men’s showers lacked curtains and they all lacked charm. The room assigned to him was exactly like the others — gray, drab, depressing.

“I hope you feel at home, Grant. We know it’s not much but it’s…cozy.”

“Cozy like sardines in a can,” he said.

Her eyes crinkled when she laughed. She looked younger when she did — or rather, she looked like her actual age. “Like crewmen in a spaceship.”

He decided he would take the top bed. It was easier for him to climb and he didn’t like tight spaces anymore. He hoped whoever was his roommate wouldn’t mind. Once he had made that decision, he took out a week’s worth of clothes from his suitcase — clothes he had bought to leave in storage, because a lot of the weight allotted to him was taken up by the shield — and neatly laid them in his locker in a few minutes. He wondered if he’d ever stop packing and unpacking like a soldier.

Probably not.

At the feet of the bed, there were two boxes. He took the one labeled ‘Grant Stevens’ and opened it. Inside, there was a tight white uniform of a material Steve hadn’t seen before, shoes, a few shirts and sweatpants and… well, underwear and socks. They all had a small STARK logo on them, except for the two pairs of boots. It wasn't much, so he wondered how they’d do laundry in space. He could ask, but Tony would laugh at him. Maybe somebody else in the crew could tell him. Pepper had said half of them were already there and if that was the case, he wanted to meet them as soon as possible, to know what his team was going to look like. And the only place where everybody would eventually go was the kitchen, so that’s where he went. He could eat a bit too if there was anything interesting or familiar.

His hunch proved correct. There was a gorgeous redhead, the kind of gorgeous that made Steve self-conscious, sitting on the table. She was very busy picking at her cornflakes and after the first shock wore off, Steve realized she looked… young. There was something in the way she swung her feet off the table that didn’t fit the age in her files. “Natasha Romanoff?”

She turned to look at him. “Grant Stevens?”

“Yep.” He grabbed a chair and sat across the table from her. ”We’ll be working security together, right?”

That was a safe enough topic, where he wouldn’t stumble.

“The two of us against the world. Well, the universe.”

“Yes, seems a little bit… hopeful.”

“Considering the science division is two people and one of them doubles as our entire engineering crew, I think Security is doing fine.”

When she put it like that, it sounded like a suicide mission and Steve’s only comfort was knowing he’d survive no matter what. The future and the past depended on it.

“Do you want some coffee?”

She shrugged, so he poured her a cup. Steve didn’t mind the silence, but there was one question that he wanted to ask. “Why did you join?”

“Do you always start with the personal questions?”

It had been a normal question, back in his soldier days, but that had changed, like everything else. “I’m… s-sorry.”

“I’ll answer if you do,” she said, turning around to face him.

He couldn’t tell her the truth and he couldn’t parade his broken heart around either. “Life here is boring. Needed something knew.”

“Yeah. I get that. A new challenge. Facing something I don’t know if I can beat.”

He nodded, but he wondered if she was lying as much as he was. Her file had been scant — it mentioned a childhood in Russia, a move to America and then stint at SHIELD. After that, there were odd jobs in odd places, and Steve hadn’t figured out the pattern. Maybe she was just lost, searching for something. Or maybe she wanted to leave her past behind.

“Hey, who did you report back at SHIELD?” she asked. She remembered his file, then. Probably better than Steve did.

“Nick Fury. Yeah.”

He was the only SHIELD agent Steve knew and that had been baked into his backstory. His SHIELD job had been, supposedly, to be part of a STRIKE team — whatever that was — that reported directly to Fury and had been ‘wiped out’ during a mission. ‘Grant Stevens’ was the sole survivor, wanting out of SHIELD because of it. They had created fake names for the agents and faked reports and hired grieving widows. All Steve had to do was repeat his fake backstory until it seemed real.

“Weird. So did I and I never heard of a Grant Stevens. Or of your team.”

“Need-to-know basis. It’s a spy organization. They like their secrets there.”

“They’re not usually that well-kept.”

If she kept prodding, he’d make a mistake. The best defense was always a good offensive. “I never heard of you either.”

“That’s not a surprise, nobody likes to talk about me there. I’m Steve Rogers’ greatest failure.”

He flinched. “Uh, what?”

“He handpicked because he hoped I’d be some… great agent. Future SHIELD leadership. Instead, I got bored. Got out.”

“Yeah. I get why you’d do that if there was… such pressure on top of you.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling you’d get it.”

Steve didn’t know if that had been a test, but he did know he had definitely failed it.

 

After dinner — they had instant ramen, which was the only thing Steve had learned to cook in the future and Natasha didn’t seem to know much about cooking either —, Steve found his room locked. Damn it. He wanted to sleep and he needed the privacy of his own dreams. He knocked, louder than was necessary, but nobody answered from inside. Fuck it. If his roommate didn’t care… he had to get inside his room somehow. He shrugged and twisted the doorknob until there was a click that told him the lock had given out. It was okay. He deserved the rest and he’d explain it the next morning if Pepper or Tony asked — they’d understand. The door swung open and Steve peered inside. There was a curly mop peaking under the sheets of the bottom bed.

“Hm. Hello?”

The man jumped out of the bed, grabbing his glasses and putting them on. He was wearing a very ratty t-shirt with even rattier sweatpants. “Wait, was that your bed? I… hoped it wasn’t.”

“You could’ve asked before taking it.”

“I really wanted the bottom bed.”

“So you hoped I’d be too polite to ask for it now that you’ve already used it?”

Bruce Banner — Steve was sure it was him because he looked exactly like a young scientist working in cutting-edge esoteric science ought to look like — at least had the decency to blush. From the file, Steve remembered he was some sort of scientist working with gamma rays and deep space radiation. Maybe he was a doctor, of the medical kind? Steve hadn’t understood it completely.

“Hey, it’s fine. I would have done the same thing if...”

“You weren’t like 7’ tall?”

“I used to be short. I know how it feels like too.”

“Yeah, I’m sure being 6’5’’ was a nightmare.”

Steve laughed and that startled Bruce. Interesting. He wandered into the room, acting as if he owned the place, and took off his shirt with one swift movement. “You’ve never been in the military?” he said when he noticed Bruce looking away from Steve’s naked chest.

“Can’t say that I have, no.”

“You know, this is going to be awkward but…” he said, grabbing his pajamas and changing into them.

“… but we better get it over with?”

“Yep. There’s going to be a lot of… well, nudity in a small ship. We can’t be awkward about it, because an awkward team is a team that’s not working right.”

“And you’ll help us not be awkward?”

“It’s my job.”

Bruce got into bed again and turned his back to Steve. “Your job? Does Tony know you’re the team leader now? Because I’m sure he’d love to hear it.”

Steve blushed and was thankful Bruce couldn’t see it. “Oh, that’s not… I mean. I’m Security. That’s all I’m talking about.”

“I think it’s a good idea, for what’s it’s worth.”

“Hm. Thanks,” Steve said, but Bruce had already fallen asleep again.

 

Breakfast the next morning was simple. He tried to make toast, Natasha tried to wrangle the coffee maker into submission, Bruce tried to explain how the engines worked. There were a bunch of technical non-sensical words, a lot of drawing diagrams in the air and many bemused looks between him and Natasha.

“So are they good or not?” Natasha asked when Bruce made a pause to sip on his coffee.

“They’re brilliant and literally out of this world…”

There was a ‘but’ hanging in the air, so Steve decided to apply some pressure. He turned around, crossed his arms and stared at Bruce.

“Fine. Tony won’t tell you this, but they’re not that energy efficient — they burn a lot of fuel. We’ve tried to find something more… powerful but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that on Earth.”

“But they work?”

“Yes. They’ll work, they’ll withstand the six months.”

“Six months?” Steve asked. “And what if… we get stuck? Or we get lost?”

“Or decide to become space pirates?” Bruce said. “In those scenarios, we hope that Tony’s genius doesn’t fail him. Or us.”

The more he heard, the scarier depending so much on one person got, especially when that person didn’t have any command experience. But no matter the risks, the lure of space, of exploring new worlds and having new adventures was too much to resist. He’d go with them and hope that Tony would be up to the task.

Natasha and Bruce kept chatting about stuff Steve had never heard about — bands, movies, an entire past Steve was locked out of — so he decided to go back to the one history book he had brought with him before his lack of knowledge became obvious. He had fallen into an uneasy sleep filled with portents — explosions, bullets, and then the cold, always the cold — when a yelp from the kitchen woke him up. He jumped off the bed, half-convinced HYDRA had attacked the facility. No. HYDRA was gone, destroyed and rooted out from the world. All Steve was doing was boxing with shadows. When he got to the kitchen, Bruce was rubbing the back of his head and frowning.

“Hey, what is wrong with you?”

There was a small apple rolling on the floor and a young man grinning at the door. He looked rougher than Bruce and not… older, but more experienced. The lines in his face betrayed the kind of childhood Steve knew well — days filled with hunger and reckless play in equal measure.

“Just practicing my aim,” the man said.

“On people’s heads?” Steve asked before Bruce could unleash whatever torrent of expletives his expression promised.

The man raised up his hands. “Sorry. Won’t happen again, boss.”

“I’m not… the boss, but if you’re going to be part of the crew…”

“He’s not,” a woman said, pushing the man away from the door. She had long dark hair that spilled over an army jacket that made her look even younger than she was. Pepper was with her. “Hi, Stevens, right? I’m Laura Barton.”

She walked to him with confidence and extended her hand to him. “Oh. Logistics,” he said before shaking it. Her hands were small but calloused.

“Keeping you fed, clothed and hopefully alive.”

“And he is…?”

“Her husband,” Pepper said. “Who’s not actually joining the crew.”

“But we could use him to check for landmines,” Natasha said, suddenly sitting on a kitchen counter. When had she gotten to the kitchen?

“Natasha!” Clint said with a grin. “You’re here! And as loving as usual.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Laura said. “A robot is more weight-efficient and consumes fewer resources, Nat.”

“That’s a good point I hadn’t considered.”

Steve looked at Pepper, a question in his face.

“He’s saying goodbye to his wife, that’s all,” Pepper said. “And that’s _final_.”

 

After lunch, the Bartons settled in one of the rooms. Steve gave them space — he wouldn’t want to be in Laura’s place, leaving a husband behind. They couldn’t have been married for long, considering how young they looked. Why was she leaving, then? Was the money that good? He suspected it was a good salary, but he hadn’t gotten used to how money worked in the future yet.

Steve waited until sunset in the kitchen because they were supposed to have a meeting and the kitchen was the only place available. When it was time, everybody else huddled around the table and Steve went out to the hallway just outside the kitchen because he didn't fit inside of it. They waited because they couldn’t start until Tony was there and Tony was an hour late and hadn’t let them know about it. Steve started to pace in the hallway. It was disrespectful and Steve would have started the meeting on his own but Tony was the one with the plans and the money and the ship and the genius. He was the boss, despite how little he deserved it.

“Stevens… can you stop? You’re making it worse,” Natasha said.

"Sorry," Steve said then left the kitchen for the driveaway.

He didn’t want to be this nervous, but it was impossible to avoid. If this had been a stupid idea, they would have warned him, right? They wouldn’t let him go to space with a reckless idiot, they would try to stop Tony somehow. Peggy would have stopped him if this was dangerous… right? She would have tried to protect him. If she thought this was a good idea, Steve had to trust her instincts. She deserved that.

Then, he heard two raised, angry voices getting closer and froze — one was Tony’s, the other one was unfamiliar to Steve. It was loud, but Steve was the only one who could understand what was being said because everybody else was still inside the kitchen. If they heard anything at all, they would feel uncomfortable, but not as much as Steve and his super-hearing would.

He stepped back into the kitchen, tried to not listen, but he still did. The serum sometimes was more trouble than it was worth.

“You’re still hungover, Tones!”

“Why are you always such a buzzkill?”

“Hey, you know I wasn’t a buzzkill last night, but you need to shape up, man. I know you can be a great leader…”

“Why are you sounding like Steve Rogers now?” Tony said.

Steve winced. Natasha tilted her head, so she had noticed something. She couldn’t have heard the name but… he had to get more comfortable hearing his old name or else he’d give it away. The argument outside went on, but now everybody could hear because Tony and the other person had stopped in front of the kitchen’s door.

“Wow, low blow. Look, I’m coming with you. I told you I am, but this isn’t a cruise and you need to…”

Pepper opened her mouth but said nothing. Her face was as red as her hair and her eyes kept darting between people, searching for an ally who could stop whatever was happening outside the door. But she wouldn’t find one. Natasha and Clint were looking at each other over the table and biting their lips, trying hard not to laugh. Laura was putting sugar into her coffee — fourteen sugars so far, Steve was counting — and Bruce looked beatifically unaware of whatever was going on. He was a really good actor.

“Okay, no more alcohol. Or parties. Or fun. I know what’s at stake here. This is a groundbreaking space exploration program that I built from the ground up while nobody believed in me”

“I did.”

“… yes. You did. So just believe in me a little bit more, will you?”

“Always, Tony. But you need to believe in yourself too.”

“Don’t get sappy on me, Rhodey.”

The door swung open, a wave of relief went across the room and all eyes turned on Tony. There was no self-consciousness in him, just the nonchalant air of the kind of people who wore sunglasses at night. Steve had never been that comfortable in his own skin. Tony sat on a kitchen counter, looking as regal as the Queen of England even if his feet didn’t touch the ground. He grinned and waved at everybody. Pepper slid next to him and offered him a piece of paper, but he took her coffee instead.

“Oh, thank you, Pep, you shouldn’t have bothered.”

“That was my… that was my coffee and that was rude,” she said, but she didn’t try to get her coffee back.

The other man — broad shoulders, impressive arms, the overconfident air Steve associated with pilots — remained close to the door and to Steve.

“So. Welcome to the Stark Space Program. I like to think our motto is…”

“Beds could be better,” Natasha said.

“But food could be worse,” Steve added. Natasha gave him a thumbs-up.

Tony raised his eyebrows high enough they were visible above the sunglasses. “Oh, you’re friends already.”

Steve shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Wow, so you do plan on being friends?”

“I don’t think we can survive six months in space if we don’t get along.”

Laura retched and put down her coffee mug. Everybody turned to look at her. “Sorry, coffee was too… I think Grant has a good point. We’re going to be the only humans around, so we have to lean on each other. Be respectful and kind, at least.”

“So no throwing things at people, for example?” Bruce asked.

“Hey, that was just the one time! I never did it again!”

“It’s been two days, how can I trust that?”

“And he won’t be on the ship! I said that was final!”

Tony put his palms up, bewildered. “Okay, people… why don’t we calm down and talk like adults? We have important things to…”

But nobody was listening. Bruce and Clint were still arguing, Nat and Laura were having an entire silent conversation across the table, Pepper kept interrupting Clint with increasingly desperate reminders of how he wasn’t part of the crew…

Steve coughed. “Silence. Like Tony said, we have important things to discuss.”

Everybody fell silent at once. Tony frowned at Steve and Steve shrugged. It wasn’t his fault if his voice was louder than Tony’s. “Yeah. Like… Sarge over there said, who I must remind you is my employee and not in a leadership position, we have things to discuss, like our launch plans and the chart we’re following and our goal for this mission.”

They all sat a little bit straighter and looked almost professional. Not for the first time, Steve wondered what he had gotten into.

“Which is…?” Steve asked.

“To establish contact with alien civilizations and acquire as many star charts as we can to explore further at a later date.”

“We don’t have star charts?”

“Of course we have star charts. Rhodey here, he’s our pilot, you’re gonna love him except he gets kind of annoying when you’re drunk and even more annoying when he’s the drunk one, has been studying some charts we acquired before. We don’t know how accurate or up-to-date they are.”

“We’re also not sure how long it’s going to take us to get there,” Bruce said.

“So it’s a suicide mission,” Natasha said.

“I… wouldn’t call it suicide,” Tony replied. “Is it reckless? Risky? Yes, but you all knew what you were getting into. You can still walk away now.”

“Why would we?” Natasha replied. “No map, no plan, no money. Sounds like fun.”

Tony smiled. “I knew you were my kind of people.”

Somehow, Steve felt the same… but… He raised his hand. “I have a suggestion.”

“You’re supposed to wait until I’ve said you can speak when you raise your hand, but let’s pretend you did. What’s your suggestion?”

“We’re leaving in five days, aren’t we?”

Tony nodded.

“Then what about a little training?”

 

When two days later Steve knocked on everybody’s doors around dawn, he was rewarded with whines, complaints and murder eyes. Only Clint was going to sleep in late and that was because he wasn’t part of the crew. The rest of them would train during the morning and into the afternoon if they weren't good at it. When he realized nobody was getting out of bed, he knew what he had to do. He went to the kitchen and prepared coffee. His ploy worked — a long line of sleepy people showed up one after the other, luring by the fresh coffee smell. Bruce had barely changed out of his pajamas, but Natasha and Rhodes looked sharp and fresh, despite the yawning.

“We agreed it was going to be an early training,” he said with a grin.

“This is cruelly, wantonly early,” Tony said, his face hidden behind a coffee mug. “And you’re delighting in our suffering.”

“We don’t have much time and we also don’t have… actual training facilities.”

“Sorry about that. I spent the money on useless things like a spaceship,” Tony said.

Steve ignored him. This wasn’t the first time Tony had been needlessly sarcastic early in the morning. “But we’ll make do with the backyard. I’ll arrange us in teams of two for this exercise.”

Everybody nodded. The coffee and the sunlight coming in through the small window had been enough to shake off their sleepiness. That was a good sign of their ability to roll with the punches — or at least of their ability to tolerate Steve’s biological clock and chipper morning demeanor.

“Natasha, you’re with Rhodes.”

They looked at each other, sizing each other up.

“You better keep up, Romanoff.”

“Hey, I’m in better shape. You’re still hungover from Vegas.”

“Laura, Bruce, you’re together,” Steve said.

“But why not make us team up with somebody with actual combat experience?”

“In the… field, it’s likely you won’t be joining us. It’s important you two learn to work together, just in case.”

They didn’t seem that convinced, but they hid it better than Tony, who set his mug on the counter with a dramatic, over-acted sigh that wouldn’t have been out of place in a silent movie. “So… I’m with you, Grant? Are you going to babysit me?”

“What? No, I’m just…”

“Fine, sure, let’s do this.”

While Steve would have wanted actual training facilities, there was an outdoor area outside the hangar that would do in a pinch — the ground was flat, covered with concrete, and there weren’t any obstacles. He didn’t need much else, because he wasn’t going to start actually training them, not yet. His goal instead was to assess how his new crew worked. He needed to know how they moved in the field, how they fought, whether they were planners and whether they would follow orders. He had a good idea of where Natasha fell — would follow orders, would not plan —, where Tony did — would never follow orders, bad team player, probably never saw a plan he couldn’t change on the fly — and suspected that Rhodes preferred clear plans and clean orders, but wasn’t above fudging with the plan a little. Bruce and Laura were a big question mark — if they were fighters at all. And himself… well, he was such a bad soldier that the military had simply given him a platoon and let him do whatever, back in the day.

But he wanted to confirm his gut feeling. Maybe they’d prove him wrong. The first test was watching their reactions when they came out and saw who was helping them with the exercise. Sitting on a folding chair and sipping on some coffee that was likely better than Steve’s, Fury looked like the image of relaxation itself. His calm contrasted with the confused bunch of fresh SHIELD recruits wearing green alien masks that huddled behind his chair.

Most of his crew looked as confused as the SHIELD recruits, but Natasha smiled and saluted.

Tony snorted. “Pulled some strings?”

“Something like that.” He turned to the rest of them. “Goal is simple — there’s a blinking device hidden here. Let’s pretend it can blow us all up instead of just blinking. The aliens are looking for it and so are we. There are no rules except no lasting damage. You can use anything around here and any tactic, no matter how dishonorable.”

“Dishonorable tactics. I like those ones,” Tony said with a grin. He didn’t look sleepy anymore. None of them did — they all looked ready. Way readier than the SHIELD recruits at least.

Fury moved his folding chair out of the field. He had produced a bagel out of one of his pockets and was slowly munching on it.

“On the count of three! One, two…”

Natasha and Rhodes were already running across the field before Steve had even finished counting. Well, he did say no rules applied and it was good to know that neither of them would turn down a fighting advantage. He felt a little bit sorry for the bloodbath that ensued when they reached the SHIELD agents who didn’t know how to handle the flurry of kicks and punches that descended upon them. He watched them fight almost with pleasure. They were good. Natasha had the swift grace of a ballerina and the sharp edge of a knife. Rhodes complemented her perfectly, with his harsh strong punches and his quick reflexes.

Laura and Bruce remained behind, talking in hushed tones. Were they trying to avoid the scuffle? It wasn’t a bad strategy for the two weakest fighters in the team.

He turned to Tony. “So we…”

“ _We_ do nothing. Just let me…”

“This is a team building exercise, we need to work together.”

That had been the whole point of pairing himself with Tony. Force them to work together, to see each other good points.

“I’m a genius, I can solve it.”

He put his hands on top of Tony’s shoulders. There was muscle under there, surprisingly. “You’re not going to be alone out there! You can’t do everything on your own.”

“Well, watch me then!”

“Wait, it’s over there!” Laura yelled, pointing at a crate some feet away with a huge, huge smile. Natasha bashed the heads of two agents together, let them fall and made a run for it.

“How did she find it so quickly?”

“I built a sensor,” Bruce said with a smirk. “I saw you take one of the radio communicators yesterday, so I rigged a device that could detect that radio frequency.”

“You’re all a bunch of cheaters.”

“I’d say it’s more like we use all resources available,” Bruce replied.

“Too late, Romanoff! We’ve won!” one of the SHIELD agents screamed, climbing on top of some boxes and triumphantly showing the device.

But before he could press the button and end the game, it was knocked out of his hand by a precise hit with an apple. The device fell but before it hit the ground, Natasha jumped and caught it. Steve turned back and saw Clint smirking and leaning against the wall of the hangar.

“I guess I’m not so useless after all," Clint said, biting into another apple.

Considering the distance, that had been an impressive throw, then. Strong and perfectly aimed. He didn’t know much about his background, but in the days they’ve spent together, he had learned two things — he loved Laura and Laura was about to leave for six months. Steve looked at Tony. “Security could use more people.”

Tony made a non-committal sound and shook his head while the rest of the crew convened around him.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Bruce said. “We don’t know much about him.”

“We checked his background when we hired Laura and I guess we could use him to check for space mines,” Tony said. “We cannot afford to lose a robot for that.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Natasha said with a nod.

Laura stared right at Tony and crossed her arms. When he saw her steely eyes, he knew there wouldn’t be any desperate last attempt to get her husband to go with her, no passionate speech from a newlywed. “It’s your decision, Tony,” she said.

“Yeah, it is… Okay, Logistics, do we have enough food?”

“I might have calculated some extra. And then some extra to that extra.”

“Fine. You all win. We’ll take William Tell over here and eat him first if we run out of food.”

“I don’t think that’s how William Tell’s story went…” Bruce said but Tony was already walking towards Fury, not even bothering to listen when Laura tried to thank him.

“So, Barton, what are your abilities?” Steve said instead.

“I’m an archer. I know how to fight. That’s all you need to know.”

Steve would have to ask for whatever information had come up on Clint’s background check. There was something there that bothered him but he didn’t think Clint was going to tell him. Maybe he could ask Natasha about it, but she was running after Fury. By the time she was done, Fury was already climbing into a ship.

“Thank you for your help.”

“I spent a nice morning outside of headquarters and the recruits are terrified. It was my pleasure. Good luck… Grant,” Fury said and extended his hand to him.

He shook it and then Fury turned around and barked at the driver, ordering him to go back to the city. Steve watched him go, with adrenaline flooding his brain and blood pumping through his body. Maybe he could run a few miles, move a little. He started walking towards the woods near the facility — there were some trees he could punch there — when Tony stopped him with a hand over his bicep.

“Hm, Tony, is everything okay?”

“Let’s just make this clear — I’m the boss here, okay? So I won’t tolerate any more of this… this insubordination.”

Steve crossed his arms, but Tony didn’t let go of his arm. “It’s not insubordination. It’s my job. We’re leaving for at least six months and we need to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We can’t just fly around there half-cocked, it’ll get you all killed.”

“What, and you’ll survive?”

“Sorry. I meant all of us.”

Tony narrowed his eyes but didn’t press the point.

“Whatever, Stevens. You’ve been warned.”

Tony turned around, and now Steve _needed_ the run. He didn’t enjoy being angry at Tony, but Tony’s entire being was so infuriating and hard to ignore. Like a small, prickling splinter in the arch of your foot that always made its presence known and was impossible to kick out of your mind.

“You need to stop doing that,” Natasha said.

Why was she so silent? If she kept showing out of nowhere like that, Steve was going to put a bell on her neck.

“Doing what? My job? I won’t. He can get as angry as he wants.”

“So Fury seems to like you,” she said instead of focusing on Tony again.

“As much as he likes anybody.”

“Sure. What dirt do you have on him?”

“That’s not… we’re friends. Sorta.”

By the look of her face, Natasha bought his answers as much as Tony had.

By the third time he had run around the hangar, Steve had almost stopped thinking about Tony and was already thirsty, so he stopped. Normal people would be tired by then, so he made a show of panting and whining when he entered the kitchen. The only people there were Laura and Clint, but clothes covered every available surface in the kitchen. There were some spare uniforms on the gray counters, faded T-shirts on the chairs, flannel shirts on the table and several pairs of jeans hanging from the fridge.

“You’re packing, Clint?” Steve asked.

“It’s okay. I don’t need much,” Clint said. “And the most important thing, well, she’s there already.”

“Don’t try to flatter me. I still won’t pack your things.”

“I wouldn’t let you. You’re terrible at it. I had to pack all your things, remember?”

When Clint put his arms around Laura’s waist, Steve left the room — he didn’t like to intrude. Besides, he had plans to make. They only had two more days, but if they woke up early enough and were smart about the use of time, they could get a lot of training done. First, some running so Steve could know their stamina, then some sparring so he could at least have an idea of what the weak points were. It’d be important information if he needed to devise a training plan for the trip. There was a good foundation. Some of them had raw talent there and others were highly trained already. Yes. It’d all go down smoothly.

He wasn’t the only one who made them train — Tony would end each day drilling them on the spaceship’s schematics and giving them lessons on what they knew about space. There were some insane theories about rainbow bridges that Steve thought sounded stupid, but stranger things had happened. The lessons would end when the first of them fell asleep. After that, Tony would stay awake until dawn, pouring over the star charts. He wasn’t as reckless as he pretended to be, so Steve let him sleep in and skip the worst of his training.

The last night found them aching, tired and with more information about engines they had ever thought possible, but the pizzas Pepper had brought in were delicious and the beer Rhodes had brought with him was cold. There was laughter and there were jokes and running with somebody until you wanted to puke always created a bond, so they were headed in the right direction.

“You know, I’m so glad we’re leaving tomorrow,” Tony said, with a slice of pizza in each hand.

They all looked at Tony, except for Bruce. He was busy taking the last slice while nobody looked.

“So Stevens won’t make us run anymore. That’s a net positive.”

“I think there’s enough space in the ship for a morning jog,” he said.

“Maybe we need to leave him behind,” Natasha replied.

“That’d give us a little more space in the ship. It looked very tiny in the blueprints.”

Tony gasped and mouthed _traitor_ at Rhodes.

“Especially since he’s so big and takes up so much of it.”

“I won’t stay behind. You’re stuck with me now, I signed a contract.”

Tony looked thoughtful and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You can, you know? Stay behind. We might never make it back. Are you… are you all sure?”

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Nat asked.

“We could all die horribly or be lost forever in space,” Bruce replied.

“Have you ever heard of a rhetorical question, Banner?”

“Yeah, sorry, Tony.”

“I just want to know…”

“We’re all sure,” Steve said. “We know what we’re getting into.”

“I promise you — I built that ship to boldly go where no man has gone before and then come back.”

Everybody in the room was silent for a second, thinking about whether they’d ever come back maybe or about who they were leaving behind until Clint snorted.

“I _knew_ you were a Star Trek dork.”


	4. After this, it's you and your friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a few days lost in a haze of training, packing and late dinners, Steve was hit with the reality that it was finally _the_ day.

After a few days lost in a haze of training, packing and late dinners, Steve was hit with the reality that it was finally _the_ day. He didn’t set an alarm but woke up at dawn anyway. Was it really happening? Or was he still dreaming in the ice, trapped in a nightmare? No. He wouldn’t have imagined people as real as Tony or Natasha. He couldn't come up with their young smiles and their bright eyes, or the hints of a past Steve hadn’t discovered yet. It couldn’t be a dream. He sat up on his bed and breathed deeply. Air filled his lungs, expanded his chest and reminded him that he was alive, that this was real.

But the air didn’t take away the tension from his trembling body or stopped the thoughts swarming his mind. He closed his eyes and focused on the noise around the facility. Cars on the road. Birds singing in the woods. Bruce snoring on the bottom bed. Was it going to be like that on the ship? Could there be morning people and night owls in a place without days or nights? Those weren’t the only noises. In the kitchen, Natasha was rummaging through the cupboards for her favorite kind of granola. Rhodes was cursing at the coffee maker. It was time to wake up.

It was weird, that kind of intimacy. He didn’t know where Natasha came from or what Rhodes’ parents did for a living, but he knew about their favorite foods and that Rhodes always forgot to lock the doors. They didn’t know his real name, but they knew how he drank his coffee and that he took too long in the shower. His secrets would have to remain a secret, but what about theirs? Did they have the same kind of regrets he did? Were they also leaving behind empty apartments and answering machines full of unheard messages? Would he learn more about them? The other man’s jaw had tightened when he spoke the names of the crew — Steve was sure the other man knew them. But why the tension? Were all of them going to die? Or had the other man left them behind?

He shook his head. It wouldn’t do to walk down avenues of useless hypothetical scenarios, not when he could be having breakfast instead.

“Hey, Grant. Coffee’s ready,” Rhodes said when Steve entered the kitchen. He was leaning against the counter, drinking his coffee and playing with a bagel. Natasha was sitting down at the table and staring at her granola as if it held all the answers in the universe. Neither of them looked well-rested. They were dark circles under their eyes and they hadn’t showered yet. Steve hadn’t been the only one walking down Avenue What If that morning.

“Thanks,” he said and sat down at the kitchen table. He wanted one last peaceful breakfast, lingering under the sun that sneaked in through the kitchen door and enjoying how air tasted on Earth. He didn’t talk and Rhodes and Natasha didn’t mind it, lost in their own thoughts and memories. He sipped his coffee — Rhodes had gotten it exactly right — and he watched the rest of the crew get into the kitchen in waves. The Bartons were next — Clint only had coffee, but Laura had a full breakfast full with scrambled eggs and pancakes — and then Bruce. He was the only one that looked relaxed, but to be fair, that could be just sleepiness.

Only Tony was missing — and true to form, he burst into the kitchen like a tornado of nervousness and flashiness. He was fully dressed already, complete with sunglasses. Did he ever stop wearing them? And why did he like them so much, anyway? They didn’t hide the way Tony’s emotions exploded on his face all the time, because Tony didn’t have much of a poker face.

“Well, why aren’t you lot ready? You look like a bunch of Sunset Strip junkies, get on with it!”

They all turned their heads to Tony. “Good morning to you too, Tones,” Rhodes said. They had already learned to let Rhodes handle Tony when he got like that.

Tony started collecting their mugs and their half-empty bowls. “Come on, go get showered! Get presentable! We don’t have time!”

“What? The launch isn’t until…” Steve said. “Can you stop that? I’m not finished with my coffee.”

“I know, I know, but Hank Pym arrives at 8 AM and I need to have a presentable crew to fool him into thinking I got a competent, professional staff instead of a bunch of adrenaline junkies with nothing to lose!”

“And I can’t even say he’s wrong,” Bruce mused. Nobody moved at first.

“If he says no, we stay grounded,” Tony said, letting the mugs crash into the sink for emphasis. Steve hoped none of them had broken. He liked them — they all had the Stark Space Squad rocket printed on them.

But it was an effective dramatic gesture that made them bolt from their chairs and ran to the showers. There weren’t enough of them and there had already been a few rows about how long Laura took and how hairy Bruce was, but this time they all showered and changed with military precision and only a sprinkle of curses. That boded well for how they’d work under pressure. If they kept up the training, they could become a great, efficient crew.

At 8 AM sharp, they were all lined up on the tarmac, clean, fresh and well-groomed. A few seconds later, an expensive black car pulled up in front of them and the man that came out of it was exactly as mean-looking as his reputation suggested. Hank Pym was scowling even before he saw the hangar and its vintage charm.

“Stark, you never told me you were working out of a dump.”

“I prioritized other expenses, Mr. Pym.”

“Always so respectful. Almost makes me wanna buy it.”

Tony smiled awkwardly, held up his hands and didn’t fight back. That was surprising. Either he respected Pym or Pym was proud enough that Tony’s brand of sarcasm could endanger the funding, even as close to the wire as they were now. Pym and Tony shook hands and then Pym’s unsparing eyes focused on the crew now. He looked up and down each of them, with the unimpressed air of a drill sergeant.

“Is this the crew? Seems a little scant.”

Hank Pym hadn’t come alone — there was a brunette girl around Tony’s age hidden behind him. Steve guessed she was Pym’s daughter, Hope. She was dressed like she was all business, her crisp suit contrasting Laura’s flannel shirt and Natasha’s torn clothing. “Which is why you should let me join,” she said.

“No. And that’s final.”

She bit the inside of her cheek but didn’t press her father. From the looks of it, Hank Pym was stubborn enough nobody argued too much with him.

“It’s a reconnaissance mission. It makes sense to keep a small crew,” Steve said. “Wouldn’t say no to another crew member, though.”

“Too bad the only competent person you found is about as polite as you, Tony,” Pym said.

Steve smiled brightly, like he had learned during his USO tour. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t flatter me, it won’t work.”

But the corners of Pym’s mouth had turned upwards into a smile and his shoulders had relaxed. Weird man, Steve thought. Behind the arrogance and the cantankerous attitude, there was the edge of grim determination. Pym barely looked at Nat, Laura, Rhodes, and Clint. Did he even care about the mission or was this a way of paying back a favor to Howard? It wasn’t until he got to Bruce that his priorities became clear.

“Are you the guy with the idea about the…?”

“About using the Quantum Realm for traversing space, yes, it’s more energy efficient and I wanted to discuss it with you because you’re the foremost expert on it and…” Bruce started. Steve’s mind always wandered off during his and Tony’s technical explanations and he suspected most of the crew did the same. He didn’t consider himself stupid or uneducated, but Bruce and Tony spoke in a language Steve didn’t get at all. When they talked, Steve would focus on the cadence of Tony’s words — it was an intoxicating rhythm — and ignore what they were talking about. It worked as a way of falling asleep quickly.

“Absolutely not,” Pym said.

“I don’t understand why…”

“Because I said so,” Pym said. “And that ship, no matter what, is not going to be a Guinea Pig for your pigheaded ideas, are we clear?”

Bruce held his palms up and nodded. “Whatever you say, Mr. Pym, whatever you say.”

Tony cut the tension with a laugh. “So you’d rather argue about engines that don’t exist instead about the newly finished spaceship that’s going to explore the depths of space and bring back knowledge that will change life as we know it?”

Pym crossed his arms. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

That was more like it — Steve couldn’t wait to see the ship. He hadn’t been inside it yet because Tony had been really secretive about the interior and the finishing touches. Steve hoped it was… maybe not luxurious, at least not to Tony’s standards, but comfortable. More of a home than a ship. But when he saw the ship again, inside the hangar, Steve knew that even if it looked like a submarine inside, he would still love it. A spaceship, a real spaceship that would go to space. A real bit of the future instead of a sham.

Tony was skipping ahead of the group. The ship always made Tony giddy and light, like the proverbial kid in the candy store. “Voilá, the Excelsior!”

Bruce snorted. “The Enterprise was too obvious a Star Trek reference?”

“Well, I remember you being as happy as I was that Sulu had gotten his own command!”

He really needed to ask what that Star Trek thing was about.

“It’s a nerd thing, Grant. Don’t worry if you don’t understand,” Natasha muttered.

They climbed the stairs towards the ship and then the door slid open with an almost silent sound. Steve was, even if it pained him, disappointed. The roofs were barely tall enough for him, but at least it wouldn’t bother anybody else in the crew. The floor was cold harsh metal and the walls were painted white in a fruitless attempt at disguising how tight the space was. The artificial dim glow of the lights didn’t help. It didn’t look… it didn’t look homey or that comfortable, but it would have to do. Steve had lived through worse.

They were in the only communal space on the ship that wasn’t a workspace. They’d eat there — there was kitchen equipment against a wall and a table in the middle —, hang out — two comfortable sofas in dark colors, crates full of books and music albums and board games — and maybe even train. You could access everywhere in the ship through that space — two hallways lead to their rooms, a door to the cargo bay and another one to the cockpit. But there weren’t any windows, only a big domed skylight on top of the table.

“You should have hired a better interior decorator,” Hank said.

Steve privately agreed but knew better than to undermine Tony like that.

“Could an interior decorator have done this?” Tony said with a smirk and pressed a button on the table.

Steve’s eyes widened — there was a holographic star chart hovering above the table now, shimmering with a light blue glow. Planets he had never heard of and stars nobody knew about floated in the middle of the room. Why did nobody else have something like that? Tony Stark was a young, reckless kid, but he was also the only person trying to make the future look like the wonderland people had imagined back in Steve’s time. Despite everything, Steve wanted to know what else Tony could come up with.

“You’re too flashy for your own good,” Pym said and walked straight to the cockpit.

There were leather seats for eight people and a wide window. The console with all its buttons and switches and blinking lights was beyond Steve’s understanding. He had never been a good pilot, but he would have to ask Rhodes to teach him how to pilot it, just in case. Maybe Clint and Natasha too. He suspected Tony knew how to do it, but it was better to have back-ups. You could never be too prepared.

“So… where is my office?” Laura said. “You promised me an office.”

“I promised a workspace. Big difference. Follow me,” Tony replied and walked to the back of the ship, toward the cargo bay. It was a vaulted space crammed full of boxes, cans, barrels, and crates. There were no windows here either — only the big cargo door that was currently closed.

“So… here’s the armory,” Tony said. The sad corner with a few lockers and a very small desk didn't deserve that name. “It might look small, but it’s full of fun toys…” Tony said and took out a bow from one of the cupboards. “Including frighteningly low-tech toys, but with the Stark touch.”

When Tony said that, Pym rolled his eyes. “The Stark touch? What’s that? Flashiness with a touch of recklessness?”

“The Tony Stark touch, not the Howard Stark one, sir. But really… not the point. The point is our med bay over there.”

The med bay had two beds, a small desk, two lockers and a lot of equipment Steve didn’t understand. “Is Bruce going to be working there?” he asked.

“What? No. He has his own lab.”

“And I’m not that kind of doctor.”

Steve was beginning to believe this trip wasn’t the most planned trip ever. It was as reckless as Howard had implied it was. Why was Tony doing it? Ego. Wanting to prove his father wrong. He crossed his arms. “Wait. So we have no medical team?”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Most of us have some med training and the equipment is… It’ll be enough.”

“First aid is not enough! That’s too reckless.”

“Then leave the mission,” Tony said, looking up to Steve.

When had he gotten that close? Steve’s heart beat faster and his mouth went dry.

“And leave the team in your hands? Never.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. This was usually the point when people backed down from arguing with Captain America — even if… he wasn’t Captain America, not anymore — but Tony wasn’t cowed. He stared back. Defiantly. Nobody else was talking.

Pepper coughed. “Can we get moving?”

Tony took a step back and Steve uncrossed his arms. He wondered how they were going to handle each other without Pepper’s brand of elegant diplomacy around. Steve stepped away from Tony as well, but he wasn't done. If he had to force them to delay the take-off so they could get a doctor, he’d do it.

“There’s not much else to see,” Tony said and pointed at a trapdoor on the floor. “That leads to the engine room and my workshop.”

“And I assume that sad-looking desk is my office?” Laura said.

“Workspace and I’d call it cozy, myself.”

“The entire ship is… cozy,” Clint said.

“The door is that way if you want to leave.”

“Nobody wants to… If anybody wants to leave, of course you can, but please, Tony, let’s just move on so you can pick your rooms,” Pepper said.

“Yes, rooms. We want to see our room. Clint and I, you know, we still want our honeymoon suite.”

“And I want to be as far away as possible from it,” Natasha said.

“I want a private one, myself.”

“That’s because you snore, Banner,” Rhodes said. “All I care about is not being Tony’s roommate ever again.”

“We’re not finished here,” Tony muttered to Steve before following the rest of the crew toward the rooms.

Each ‘wing’ of the plane housed two small rooms and a slightly larger one. Picking the rooms was a quick affair — the Bartons took one of the big ones and Tony took the other, citing ‘boss privilege’. Steve picked the one in front of Tony’s rooms. His hearing was too good and he didn’t want to risk hearing the Bartons’… private activities. He had always been very easy to fluster.

“So we’re going to be neighbors,” Natasha said. “I hope you don’t snore.”

“I’m an old man, of course I snore.”

“You’re… like four years older than me. So don’t play the age card.”

"Well, you can't say I didn't warn you."

 

Because they had no money and no extra staff, they had to load their baggage themselves. It was hard to pretend he was making a lot of effort, but it was better if nobody noticed how strong he was. Besides, if he handled his own things, nobody would notice the shield.

At least he was satisfied with his room. It was small, but his things would fit and it’d be a private space he could retreat to. And maybe, with time, it'd look less like a cell.

While they handled the baggage, Tony, Rhodes, and Bruce started to prepare the ship. It wouldn’t be long before they left — so Steve had very little time to convince somebody to stop the take-off. It was the best for the crew and Steve had to protect them from their own recklessness. Tony was a dead-end and too hell-bent on the journey, so it would have to be somebody reasonable and with influence over Tony. There was only one possible answer.

Pepper was in the small office reviewing the contracts one last time, checking everything had been signed. Her clothes were perfect, but her eyes were full of tears and her hair was a mess.

He didn’t want to add more stress to her job, but it couldn’t be helped. He had a duty. “… Ms. Potts?”

“Oh, Stevens. I’m… do you need anything?”

She was smiling at him and it was… it was genuine. It had been a while since so many people had smiled at him. “I won’t beat around the bush. I don’t think we should leave, not without a doctor.”

Her smile became thin and taut, a wall of polite ice. “Tony has taken care of that.”

“His solution is not…”

“Mr. Stevens, if you don’t trust Tony, you can leave at any time. We’ll pay you for your time.”

There wasn’t anything he could reply to that, so he had no choice. Yes, he could leave, but he wouldn’t be able to deal with the guilt if something happened to the crew. He had experience in things beyond this world and the serum was an advantage no matter what he did. The crew would be better off if he went along. They needed him and nobody else did.

 

“So, we’ve picked rooms, we’ve loaded the ship, only a few last touches and we’re off,” Tony said in the middle of the rec room.

They all looked at each other. Natasha was the first to grin and the first to speak. “Let’s suit up, gentlemen. And Laura.”

The uniforms were as tight as they looked and with all the white… They highlighted every curve and every plane of their bodies. Nobody was in bad shape and back when he was an art student, he would have killed to have them as models. He tried hard not to, but he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of Tony’s… sculpted back before he looked away and focused on the wall. What would Howard say if he caught him doing that? He shook his head. He had to stop thinking about Howard and everybody else he was leaving behind.

They had their last meal on Earth silently. It was nothing special — instant mac-and-cheese — and Steve wished he had thought of something better, a better good-bye. It didn’t sound like the last meal before a mission that was almost suicide. Nobody was rushing to make one last call home or writing a letter to their mother. There were no silent tears and no boisterous toasts. It seemed they had all said their good-byes before. A bunch of ghosts, already gone.

They were busy digging into dessert when somebody slammed the kitchen door open. It took him a second to realize it because he wasn’t wearing scrubs, but the man unceremoniously dropping his two suitcases on the kitchen floor was Stephen Strange. With all the politeness he had shown when he had tested Steve, Strange grabbed an unclaimed pudding and started eating it.

“Why are you here? Do you like pudding that much?” Tony asked in disbelief.

“I’m joining you and you leave today.”

“Why? What?”

“Like I said, I’m joining you because I checked — none of you is a doctor. And that’s frankly stupid.”

Nobody could argue with that, but Tony tried. “We don’t need a doctor, we have robots, and anyway, there isn’t enough food.”

“Actually, I have extra supplies,” Laura said, with a grimace.

“How much more of what we needed did you add, Barton?”

“Well, I had enough food for two years, for six people. With two more, it’s a year and a half instead.”

“… damn it, you’re too efficient. How did we have enough money to hire you? But did you check…?”

“The weight? Yes, of course, and I checked again yesterday.”

Steve was absolutely certain Strange had never been part of the crew. This was farcical. There wasn’t even room on the… Wait. He remembered the _eight_ seats in the cockpit. The two larger rooms. The fully equipped med bay.

He raised his hand. “A doctor might be useful," he said.

“What did I tell you about how raising your hand works, Stevens? Fine. Pepper, draw a contract up.”

“What?” Hank said. “You can’t just…”

Tony cut him off. “He’s right, we’re gonna need a doctor. Imagine if we got space flu.”

“But we have no room for him. Literally,” Bruce said.

“I can share,” Steve said. A doctor was too good an asset to pass up because of creature comforts. He had slept in worse places and with worse people.

“But I won’t,” Strange added bluntly. “I need my privacy.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Fine, then Sarge here will move into my room.” They all stared at him. Steve shared their surprise. “What? It’s larger. And I don’t snore.”

 

He moved Strange’s things to the ship himself, because Strange said something about his hands being precise instruments and Steve didn’t want to argue with him. Besides, he had to move his things to Tony’s room anyway. Because now they were sharing rooms, because that was the greatest idea ever and would not, at all, end in disaster. He gave himself two weeks before strangling Tony, but there was nothing else he could do. Worst case scenario, he could sleep in the cargo bay. He dragged his things across the hallway because even if he could’ve carried his suitcase and his crate in his arms, he didn’t want to show off his strength unless it was strictly necessary.

Tony’s room was larger, yes, but small enough Tony had to move a few things in order to open a bed that was attached to the wall. That was useful and clever, but he hoped the bed was more comfortable than it looked like.

Tony’s things were all over the room already and Tony himself kept fluttering around and re-organizing them. Steve put the crates with his things under the bed. He’d organize them later on, once they were in space. In space. He was going to be in space and no matter how much he repeated it, he couldn’t believe it yet.

The rest of the room was unremarkable. Tony’s bed was across his, there were two lockers so they could hang their clothes and a desk on the other side of the room, with two chairs. They were sharing, then. That would not cause problems either. He sat on his bed and stared at Tony. There was a question he wanted to ask as soon as possible. “Did you know about Strange?”

Tony didn’t look up from his suitcase. “Know what?”

“Did you… plan for this? Or was it just a coincidence the ship can house eight people and not just six?”

“Plan for this? Not really. All rooms are supposed to house two people, actually. The ship needs a larger crew than I could get.”

“And Strange just showed up for no reason?”

“There was an empty medical bay. He probably felt a nesting instinct about it or something. Doctors are weird.”

“Tony, I think that’s bullshit.”

Tony rolled his eyes and finally looked up from his suitcase. “Fine. I called him two days ago and told him we hadn’t asked him to come because everybody knew he’d say no. I managed to imply it was because he was a coward. Time did the rest.”

Tony was smarter than Steve had given him credit for. He was also unable to be straight with Steve, always over-complicating the truth. “I’m sorry for...”

“For undermining me in front of the man who decides if we get money or not? Apology accepted.”

Steve shook his head. “I won’t apologize for that, but I should’ve asked if we had a doctor before. My timing was bad.”

“Wow. You’re a dick,” Tony said, but he was smiling. Steve liked that smile.

 

It wouldn’t be too long now. Everything had been loaded onto the ship. They had all suited up. Tony and Bruce were inside the engine room, doing yet another round of ‘last checks’.

Everybody else was hanging outside the ship — they had nothing to do but crackle with nervousness. Clint was showing off his aims throwing a rock at things, while Rhodes goaded him on. Laura and Strange were talking about medical supplies. From what Steve could hear, Strange was grudgingly impressed by how literally everything he could ask for was already accounted for.

Steve, meanwhile, sat on an empty crate by himself. He had his sketchbook with him because it was a way to keep his mind entertained and away from the sinking feeling in his stomach. First, he tried to capture the way the sun bounced off the plane’s shiny exterior, but when he was done, all he could do was stare at the blank page. He had no idea what to draw.

“So you’re an artist?” Natasha asked, peering over his shoulder. He hadn’t heard her get close.

He had wanted to be an artist, once upon a time in a different world, but now it was something that belonged to him, that he could do on his own time. Not a duty, not a job, just a hobby.

“Something like that.”

“Can you draw Pym? He looks ready to burst.”

He grinned and did a quick sketch of Pym with smoke coming out of his ears. Not his best work, but it made Nat laugh so much that Clint came over to see what the fuss was about.

“Oh, wow, that’s good.” Clint looked around. “Draw Stark’s driver now.”

Hogan was standing next to his boss, trying to look imposing and failing at it. Steve sketched him with even wider shoulders and crossed arms, towering over a very tiny Tony.

“You’re good,” Laura said when she joined them. “I’m so going to pick you for Pictionary.”

“Really, Laura?” said Clint with mock hurt.

“Really, Clint.”

“Well, I can’t say I don’t see the wisdom of it.”

“You’re just annoyed I picked him first.”

Steve wanted to ask what Pictionary was, but decided not to. For once, he didn’t feel out of place and he didn’t want to be reminded of all the things he didn’t know.

An alarm blared and they all stopped laughing. Steve knew what it meant — ship was ready for take-off.

“Come on, let’s go,” Natasha said.

Steve looked down at his sketchbook. Inside its pages, Steve had drawn the foggy streets of London during the Blitz and Peggy’s full lips and expressive eyes, the crowded New York of his childhood and Bucky sleeping with his rifle next to him. There were sketches of the Howling Commandos drinking, of Howard working on something… He closed it.

He could take it with him. Hide it and look at it in the middle of the night, while everybody else was sleeping. It was a risk. It was a rope tied to his feet. He set it on the crate and turned his back on it.

The only people inside the hangar were Tony, Pepper, and Hogan. Tony was grinning, but he sniffled when Hogan patted his back and held back his tears when Pepper hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Promise us you’ll come back,” she said.

“Oh, you won’t get rid of me this easily.”

He’d bring him back, Steve thought. He’d bring Tony back to this woman who loved him so much. He wouldn’t let the crew down.

 

Steve got to the cockpit last, so the only empty seat was next to Tony.

“You’re late, Sarge. Getting cold feet?”

He shook his head and sat down.

“So we’re all ready?” Rhodes asked. “No more last-minute crew additions?”

“Well, maybe Hope sneaked in but...” Tony said. “No, I don’t think so.”

The engines began to rumble. Natasha gave Steve a thumbs up.

“Last chance to jump out of the ship,” Rhodes said.

Steve grabbed onto the seat’s armrest. The hangar door opened and the ship moved forward and then accelerated. This was it. They were leaving. Steve's heart beat faster. Nobody talked.

The ship tilted back and left the ground behind. Only clouds and the blue sky laid before them, but they left that behind soon enough too. The windows were full of stars now. They were in _space _.__ Steve looked out one of the side windows and saw Earth below, round and colorful and fragile. He put his hand against the cold glass and tried to imagine the people down there. Would he remember their faces? Would he ever come back and walk on its surface? Would he forget how the sun felt or how the full moon brightened the sky?

“Say goodbye,” Tony whispered to him. Tony’s hand laid on top of his because there wasn’t enough space on the armrest. It was warm and soft and not at all what Steve would have expected. “Are you ready?”

“Always,” Steve said and looked at Earth for one last time.

His thoughts were cut short when the engines roared and drowned all the other sounds in the cockpit. Then, a rainbow exploded in front of them. Steve squeezed Tony's hand and Tony laughed.

"Scared, Stevens?"

"Never," he replied. Once he made a decision, he committed to it. No half-measures. No regrets, not anymore. Earth was his past now and his future was in the stars.


	5. A face with a view

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers is oblivious and Tony Stark is horny.

“All I’m asking is when are we getting there. It’s a valid question.”

Steve resisted the urge to rip off the armrest of his seat. It was a valid question Strange had already asked a few hundred times. The answer hadn’t changed.

Next to him, Tony was rolling his eyes. “Yes, it is, but we’ve told you already — we will leave our seats once our course is stable and the engines have cooled off.”

“Is it always going to be like this? The waiting?” Steve asked, trying to distract Tony from arguing with Strange. He had the feeling he would have to do a lot of that.

“Nope. We put those engines through the wringer. It’s the largest jump we’ll make. We won’t need as much cool down with the smaller jumps.”

Steve leaned back on his seat. If he moved, maybe his body would feel less stiff. “Now we’re… on a set course to… Waypoint Station, right? Three small jumps and then…”

Tony looked at him, in slight surprise. “You memorized the exact route?”

“Of course I did. Was I the only one?”

Natasha laughed a bit. “Yes. You were.”

He shrugged — if they wanted to be irresponsible, they were welcome to do so — and turned to look at the stars. He didn’t recognize any of them so he amused himself by imagining patterns and naming nebulae, harnessing the chaos of an unfamiliar sky and turning it into nostalgic yearning. He was busy creating the Shield Constellation when Tony announced the ship was stable enough for them to leave their seats. Good. His body was itching for action. He untied the seatbelt and jumped out of the seat. Freedom was great. Without moving from the seat, he put his arms overhead and stretched his entire back, enjoying the way his muscles unlocked. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was in space. They had survived the beginning of their journey, and now came the hard part.

When he opened his eyes, he caught Tony staring with his mouth open. What was his problem? Steve wasn't doing anything weird, so he stared back. Tony rolled his eyes and waved his hand. “You’re taking a lot of space,” he said and went back to his conversation with Rhodes.

Steve was never one to stay where he was unwanted, so he turned his back on them and went toward his room.

 

Said room was still small and still cramped with Tony’s things, but that was going to change. First, he put his standard-issue digital alarm clock on top of his shelf. He didn’t want to slack off and it was important to have a set routine. He kicked open the locker at the feet of his bed and took out some sweatpants. It was a relief to get out of the white uniform. Technological marvel or not, but it wasn’t roomy enough around… certain parts of his anatomy.

He had nothing to do for the rest of the ‘day’ — could it be called a day? — so he had time to spare. He didn’t want to start going through the library books, so he grabbed a few of his art supplies. He eyed the desk on the other side of the room — he was pretty sure Tony was going to be annoyed if he put his things over there, so that’s what he did. He set his things up exactly the way he liked them and then he picked a new sketchbook to use.

Since the chair was hard and cold, he sat down on the bed which was marginally fluffier. The blank page stared at him, empty, ready for whatever Steve wanted to do with it. His pencil slid across the pages, sketching his last memories of Earth before they faded like old photographs. He drew the crew before take-off and Strange having one last cup of coffee. He sketched Hank Pym bent over schematics, arguing with Tony and Hope Pym sitting on a crate, staring up at the ship. Fury climbing onto his Jeep. Pepper clutching her clipboard. Happy Hogan saluting Tony.

By the time Tony entered the room, Steve had put down his sketchbook on the desk and was busy re-folding his clothes. He didn’t want them to be wrinkly.

“Hey, that’s my desk. Why are those things on my desk?”

“There are two chairs. Two chairs, two people.”

“So? I need a lot of space. For my genius and all that.” Tony walked to the desk. “Art supplies? You’re an artist?”

“I… dabble.”

Tony opened Steve's sketchbook without hesitation.

“Hey, that’s private.”

“Wow. Is this Happy? You’re good. Can I keep it?”

There was so much yearning in Tony’s voice that he couldn’t say no when he tore the page from his sketchbook and taped it to the wall, alongside the Pepper sketch. Tony touched it with his fingertips. “Already starting to look like home, don’t you think?”

 

It worried him a bit, because it could become very annoying very quickly, but Steve could hear everybody unpacking in their rooms. There weren’t that many words, but there were plenty of whispers, laughter coming from the Bartons’ room and a few quiet curses from Strange’s. Tony had barely unpacked — _I know how to live out of a suitcase, Stevens_ — before sitting down at the desk to jot down equations on a notebook full of coffee stains and scribbles. He didn’t want to bother Tony and the atmosphere of their room was thick with unsaid things, so Steve left it as soon as possible. The rec room was empty and, to the disappointment of his rumbling stomach, there was no sign of dinner. He had started to poke at their food, when Natasha and Laura came down the hallway.

“How’s the honeymoon suite?” she asked.

“That’s the Bartons,” Steve said.

Laura snorted while she rummaged through their supplies. “Well, better than nothing. We couldn’t afford a honeymoon when we got married.”

“How long…” Steve started to say, trying to picture Laura as a bride or Clint as a groom. There was something incongruous about it. “Sorry, maybe you don’t want to…”

“I don’t mind it. But I think it’s better if we save the wedding anecdotes for when we’re bored. And it’s nine months, by the way.”

“We can talk about how insane it is we’re in space instead,” Clint said with a grin, entering the room. “Or about how hungry we are.”

Steve couldn’t agree more. They sat down around the table while Clint took over cooking duties, if re-hydrating some lunches counted as ‘cooking’. But at least they looked tastier than C-rations. Technology had come a long way.

“Clint, darling, we have fresh food still. Use that. The freeze-dried food is for later on.”

“I know, I know. Starting tomorrow I will. But I thought we had to celebrate with some astronaut food!”

Strange and Bruce showed up when it was ready — convenient timing, that — and Tony sat down second-to-last. “Hey, can somebody bring Rhodey? He’s obsessing over the course and I’d hate it if he had to eat his dinner cold, considering how… amazing and elaborate it is.”

“We can just yell for him,” Laura said. “It’s not as if this is… you know, a cruise.”

“It’s cozy,” Tony said. “But you’re right. Rhodey! Food’s ready!”

Steve decided to wait until Rhodes was there before eating, even if his stomach kept rumbling. But it would be rude to dive in, especially since Rhodes was one of the only responsible members of the crew.

“So… we’re in space,” Rhodes said when he sat down. “And we’re not dead.”

“Yet,” Natasha said.

Even Steve found himself laughing at Natasha’s comment. Well, at least everybody was aware of the risk. They dug in into their dinners. Hunger, Steve thought, was the best seasoning. Or maybe it was having dinner with a rowdy group of people, with starlight coming through the skylight and the entire universe above their heads.

“Banner, pass me the salt,” Natasha said.

“Forgot the magic words.”

“And I need it first,” Strange said.

Before a fight over the salt could break out, Steve held his palm up. “Come on, let’s be nice to each other.”

“Are you always going to be so reasonable, Nanny Stevens?” Tony said.

“Somebody has to be,” he said.

He knew he had failed to keep the annoyance out of his voice, but he didn’t feel guilty about it. Tony was pushing his buttons, for no good reason. He was just doing his job. It wasn’t his fault that the crew could be so childish, including the alleged captain. Right. Tony was the boss. He promised himself he’d learn not to be baited by Tony. They’d have to live together for six months. They had to get along, for everybody’s sakes.

He handled the dishes — they should assign the chores before it got messy — in record time and then went to his room through the empty hallway. It hadn’t grown any larger and there wasn’t much to do, not yet. He glanced at the alarm clock — time to sleep, although his body was taut with tension. How could he not be like that, bouncing on his feet, when he was in space? _In space_ , for real. He was smiling like a loon when he took off his shirt so he could change into his pajamas — dark blue, with the Stark Space Squad logo on it. That was exactly when Tony decided to burst into the room screaming obscenities and waving his hands around. Steve stood frozen, self-conscious about his exposed chest.

“Woah,” Tony said. “You’re big. Like… wow. I knew you were tall and built and hunky but… this is something else.”

Steve blinked. Was Tony that tired? Or was the babbling supposed to make sense? “Hm, yeah?”

“If I had known… you kinda fill out the entire room. It’s disturbing. Fascinating. Both?”

Steve finally put on his shirt and decided against taking off his pants. That'd be too much awkward. “My size is an asset. For security.”

Tony grabbed one of the chairs and sat on it. He wouldn't stop staring. “Are all those muscles real? They… I didn’t know some of those existed.”

“… yeah. Pretty real.”

“Can I touch them? Wait, don’t answer that, it’s just scientific curiosity but it’s inappropriate for a boss and I won’t ask again. I respect your boundaries because that’s what bosses and adults do.”

Steve could hear Pepper’s voice in those words. It was heartwarming that Tony seemed to value her opinion so much, even so far away. Every time Steve decided Tony was a dick, Tony confused Steve with some earnest, touching show of vulnerability. It was maddening.

“Are you going to sleep now? Or are you going to stay up? Because I need… I mean…”

“I’m not. I came here to grab some notes of mine, that’s all. Bruce and I need to keep monitoring the engines. Rhodey will remain at the helm.”

“We’ll relieve you tomorrow. Or whenever you want to rest.”

“It’s fine, I can’t sleep. I don’t get how you can. Don’t you understand where we are? Doesn’t that… I don’t know, excite you?”

It did. There was a tangle of feelings inside his chest, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment. How could he even begin to explain it, when Tony didn’t even know who he really was or what he had lost? He was excited, yes, but he also yearned from something that did not exist anymore. Space was real, more real than the life he had left behind on Earth. And knowing that there were floating in the middle of nowhere, light-years away from everything they knew… it made him dizzy. Dizzy was not a good look on Captain America. “I need to be at my best, in case something happens.”

“Nothing will, you worrywart.”

Steve wished that would be true, but no plan ever survived contact with the enemy.

 

He laid on his bed — not the worst bed he had ever slept on, not by a long shot — and put his hand against the wall. Outside of the cold metal hull, the entire universe thrummed and breathed. Exploding supernovas, asteroids swirling around black holes laid beyond their small fragile husk, floating alone in the middle of space… Big, shiny spaceships bursting with cargo traveled between planets crowded with colorful people. There were vast solar systems brimming with unknown kingdoms and surreal animals in shapes they couldn’t imagine. Dead starlight traveled across the cosmos until it reached Earth and everything they had left behind. He had to grin, even if the excitement burning his chest interfered with his duty. He couldn’t calm down, not now. There would be time for plans and competence, but for now, excitement would be enough.

When he stared at the featureless ceiling, he wished there was a skylight there too, so he could fall asleep watching the stars, so he’d be sure it was for real. Maybe he could ask Tony, once they got back to Earth, once their next… He had to stop dreaming of things yet to come. Maybe, by the time the ship got back, he’d be already in the past, with Peggy. Maybe the ship would never go back. He tried to sleep, but hours later, when Tony opened the door, took three steps and face planted into the other bed, Steve was still awake.

 

He was jarred out of his dreams by the shrill insistent ringing of his alarm clock. His arm darted from under his blanket and turned it off. Burrowed in the blankets — the ship was colder than he expected —, he hoped the sound hadn’t bothered Tony. He opened one eye and peeked. Tony was still deeply asleep, so he hadn’t heard. Steve had been lucky, but they needed to coordinate shifts so they wouldn’t annoy each other. Well, more than usual.

Okay, he had to stop wasting time. He threw off the blankets, jumped out of bed and put on his uniform in five minutes. Good, but he could do better. After a quick stop at the bathroom, he went to the rec room. This time, Clint _  
_ used the fresh food. There was some bread — Laura had been clear that it would last just a few days and then they were out of bread for the next six months, so Steve was going to enjoy it as much as possible —, there was fresh coffee, even some fruits… All that was missing was scrambled eggs and a bit of bacon.

“Good morning,” Natasha said, toast in hand. She and Clint were the only ones in the kitchen. He assumed Bruce had crashed like Tony had and he could hear Laura in her office, already working. Strange and Rhodes were probably still in their rooms.

“Good… morning,” he said and grabbed some toast himself. “Are you both ready?”

His team nodded, with twin grins on their faces. Breakfast was fast and furious and clean-up was efficient and quick. Clint drank about three mugs of coffee and Steve was unwillingly impressed. Natasha, it turned out, had requested special cereal. The kind that looked like candy animals and tasted of plastic, at least according to Steve.

Their corner of the ship was snug his head almost hit the ceiling. Natasha sat on the only desk and gestured at the only chair, so Steve on it. Clint leaned against the wall.

“So, this is our… office,” Natasha said.

“It’s very spacious,” Steve replied.

“Are we going to take turns with the chair?” Clint asked.

“He’s the boss, Clint. He gets the chair.”

“The boss wants us to settle the shifts.”

“Well, if you don’t want to ruin my marriage — and you don’t, because this is a very small space to handle a divorce — you’ll let me have the early shift so I don’t bother Laura.”

“We can trade the other two shifts. How about that, Grant?”

Steve nodded. “I wouldn’t want to bother Tony and I think he’s a night owl, so it’s better if I avoid the early shift. So… that’s settled.”

“I don’t trust that look in your face,” Natasha said.

“We also need to talk chores.”

Clint sighed, but it was the sigh of somebody who had lived on his own and was dreading what he knew necessary. Natasha was another thing entirely. She pouted and crossed her arms. With the slightly too large uniform, she looked like a kid. “Chores? Really? We’re in space!”

“And until Tony builds dishwashing robots, we’re still gonna need to do chores.”

“Fine,” she said.

 

Steve was thankful for the lulls of normal travel between jumps, where the ship lazily slid through space, as if they didn’t have a time limit to get to their destination. It gave them a few weeks of peace where they could properly assign tasks and shifts. Time enough that the rec room started looking lived in — books thrown around, board games that started to lose pieces, old coffee cups left to rot. Arguments grew in the garden of routine, the kind of arguments you had with people you knew — Laura’s concern about how Tony would ruin all the books by leaving them open, Strange’s inflexible rules about how they had to shower, Clint and Bruce’s endless war over the thermostat.

It also gave them time to start missing things. Before missing the wind or new people or songbirds, Steve missed day and night. On the ship, ‘days’ were marked by light coming on and turning down at regular intervals, but Steve missed the familiar cues. Sunsets. The moon. The light of dawn caressing his face. It was hard for him to sleep without those cues, even with how exhausted he was sometimes, so he’d move around a lot in his sleep.

Tony liked to complain about it during breakfast. At first, Steve thought it was just Tony complaining for the sake of it — Tony complained a lot, about the cold, about being bored, about being busy… —, but one night Steve was jolted awake when a pillow landed squarely on his face.

“Okay, Stevens, what’s your deal? Why do you move so much? Are you jerking off? Is that it?”

“What? That’d be… be completely inappropriate.”

“Well, if you think so, then don’t interrupt me in my showers.”

Steve groaned and hid his face in his pillow. Tony was so childish sometimes. He knew Tony was some sort of genius, but he was the most annoying genius Steve had ever met.

 

His days shaped themselves into a routine. Breakfast. To his office. Chatting with Natasha — Nat, she wanted him to call her Nat —. Dealing with her jokes at Steve’s expense. Dinner. Then dealing with Tony’s jokes at Steve’s expense. Sleep. Rinse and repeat. So he welcomed any day when something happened — even if it was inconsequential, the kind of memory that only looked important with the benefit of hindsight, once it had become a piece of the jigsaw of Steve’s life.

“Hey, team,” Clint said one morning that had looked like much of the others.

“What’s up, Barton?”

“Ta-dah!” Clint said, opening the crate he had brought and taking out what looked like a…

“A dartboard?” Nat said in a pitch-perfect rendition of an unimpressed Russian aristocrat, with her straight back and her disdainful arched brows.

“What? You think you’re going to lose?”

“Oh, come on. Stevens,” she said and turned towards Steve. “Tell him this is inappropriate and unprofessional.”

“Wow, you really are scared he’s gonna beat you,” Steve said with a grin.

Clint did beat them, 9 times out of 10. Steve wondered where Clint had learned to aim like that. It wasn’t raw talent — there were training and discipline there.

“You’re cheating.”

“Totally cheating.”

“You’re sore losers,” Clint replied, jotting down another point in the tally taped to the wall.

“Not at all. You’re just a cheater who’s gonna have to make us lunch.”

“I always make you lunch. You’re terrible cooks.”

“Lunch? Is it ready?” Strange said, popping his head out of the med bay. A dart landed inches away from his face.

Nat held up her hands. “Sorry, it slipped. I’m very bad at this. You can ask Clint.”

Steve knew that he had to rein her in, but Strange’s expression was just too funny. Strange threw the dart back at them — it landed about two feet away from them — and went back to his med bay, huffing. Steve would have to apologize later.

“You know, I think we’re getting a little too bored.”

“You think?” Clint replied.

“I think we need to train. Prepare ourselves,” Nat said.

Steve smirked. “Yep. Time to make everybody break a sweat.”

 

There was enough work for most of them, even if they hadn’t gotten to their destination yet. Bruce and Tony spent their days tinkering and monitoring the engines, Rhodes updated the star charts, Nat and Steve developed their training program, Clint cooked, Laura was busy arranging the cargo bay to her liking.

But there was somebody who was out of work and bored out of his mind.

“I wish some of you would get into an accident. Can’t you get into a fight? Drop a box on your feet?” Strange said during one of their dinners.

Steve rolled his eyes at the same time Tony did. The only upside of Strange’s usual mood was that Tony found needling him for no real reason fun. Strange didn’t rise to the bait, but it was fun to see Tony try. His eyes would sparkle with a playful glint and his grins were contagious. Tony’s presence was always electrifying, magnetic, even when he was being kind of a dick. Maybe especially when he was being kind of a dick.

“Maybe you can take up a hobby. I saw a book on magic in the library. Why don’t you try it? You have the facial hair of a children’s magician anyway.”

“That’s not… I know what to do with my free time. But I joined to be challenged. To face new things. And so far, the worst that has happened was that time you slipped on the shower, doing who knows what, and bruised your butt.”

Steve had a fairly certain suspicion of what Tony had been doing. He tried to keep the images out of his mind. He didn’t always succeed.

“I know. We’re almost there. Next week, you’ll be dissecting aliens. It’s an expression, Stevens, we won’t be dissecting anything. At least not anything that can talk.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to, your ‘disappointed granny’ face gave it away.”

“Sorry.”

He hadn’t made a face. Not at all. He had just been upset at the idea of dissecting living things for no reason other than Strange’s boredom.

“Oh, now you’ve made him pout, Tony,” Nat said.

Sometimes, he wondered if Nat even liked him.

“I like his pouting better.”

“Sure you do,” Rhodes said. “Sure you do.”

 

Steve couldn’t begrudge Strange his annoyance. He understood the itching for a problem to arise, the need for something to happen, but he had to find better avenues to channel that. His first step would be to up the training even more and he knew how to start. His speed bag was still waiting at the bottom of his crate, so one non-descript morning, he grabbed and nailed it to the Security corner’s ceiling.

Rhodes was the first to notice. “Good idea, Stevens. I was getting rusty already.”

He was the first to use it every day, right after waking up or right before going to sleep, whenever he had night duty. Rhodes, Nat, and Clint weren’t the only ones to use it — sometimes Strange would work out his frustrations against it or Tony would pretend to be punching Strange in the face. The ship was so small that running was out of the question, but Laura had brought a jumping rope with her. She joined them in the mornings. Two of them would drink coffee and chat, while the other two trained.

Tony, for his part, had an uncanny knack for showing up whenever Steve was working out.

“Are you here to mock me?”

“Not really. I’m observing you. You have… good form.”

“You box?”

“A bit. Happy does, so he’s taught me a few things.”

“So what about a little sparring, then? I’m tired of bags that don’t hit back.”

Maybe it would help clear the air of whatever was causing the permanent tension between them. Steve couldn’t name the… static electricity between them. Whatever it was, it drew his eyes to Tony all the time, to how he worked with his hands and how he laughed at Rhodes’ jokes or read murder mysteries sprawled down in the sofa, his T-shirt riding up and exposing his belly.

Tony smirked and took off his jacket. There was muscle under there, Steve had seen it whenever Tony changed in their tiny room. He never tried to look, but it was difficult to avoid. Besides, Tony looked at Steve too. Tony sauntered towards Steve and looked up, the ghost of the smirk still there, haunting his lips. “I won’t go easy on you.”

“Didn’t expect anything else.”

“Well, I’ll get my First Aid kit ready,” Strange said and leaned on the wall outside the medbay.

Steve ignored him. He ignored Nat and Clint loudly betting on Tony, while they sat on two crates near Laura’s desk and ignored Rhodes loudly betting on Steve in turn. He focused on Tony — his fighting stance, his smirk, his amused dark eyes. “You ready, Stark?”

“I was born ready.”

He wasn’t, at least not ready for the way Steve lunged at him. Tony sidestepped him — he had good instincts, at least. Steve tried a punch and Tony tried to knee him in the groin. Unsuccessful, but it was good that Tony wasn’t above any underhanded tactic. They danced around each other, a kick here, a punch there, until Steve got tired of the game. It was easy to throw a punch as a feint but then to kick Tony’s feet from under him. Tony fell and Steve held him against the floor. They both panted, looking at each other. Sweat dripped from Tony’s forehead and Steve could see his collarbone and the outline of his muscles below his shirt. He heard Tony’s heart beating fast against his chest and he knew his heart was beating even harder.

He let Tony go.

“I’m gonna count that as a win,” Tony said and stood up. “That was fun. We should do that more often.”

“You know where to find me.”

“The showers, I hope? … Because we’re disgusting and smelly, that’s… that’s why I’d find you in the showers. Yeah.”

Nat laughed from her crate and that made Tony scram. Was he that sweaty? “I’m jealous,” she said. “You’ve never sparred with me. I know I’m not as cute but…”

“Tony wouldn’t like being called cute.”

“Oh, so you agree he has nice pouty lips and expressive eyes?”

“The ass isn’t too bad either,” Laura said from her desk.

Steve narrowed his eyes. What were they talking about? He hadn't… he hadn't noticed that.

At all.

“Romanoff, please. If you wanna spar, just ask for it.”

“Okay. Hey, Stevens, I think we ought to spar.”

Tony hadn’t been bad, but Nat was a class of her own. She was quick, she was mean, she had no honor. He had to chase her to the rec room, avoiding her kicks and trying to land a punch. When she looked distracted, he lunged and rolled her over his shoulder. She landed on a chair, breaking its leg.

Laura showed up first, but Tony was right behind. Water was still dripping from his hair and his shirt was clinging to his wet body. He had just showered, then.

“Is any of you a carpenter? Because now we’re down one chair and it hasn’t even been a month,” he said.

Steve helped Nat up. She looked fine — she wasn’t even winded. Good stamina, there.

“Sorry. We didn’t mean to. We were… training.”

“You’re supposed to be the reasonable one, Stevens,” Tony said and left for the cockpit.

 

They didn’t talk after that. Steve hoped Tony would let it go, but when he sat down for dinner, he realized Tony liked to nurse grudges. The broken chair was on top of the table surrounded by crude paper flowers.

“I did not want to have to do this, to mourn our first fallen comrade,” Tony said, with fake solemnity. “In such a risky journey, loss is but unavoidable. Across the stars, we will leave a trail of despair and our wailing would be heard across space, except space is a vacuum and therefore silent. Silent, like our friend is now. Please remember her, always, at her best. Uncomfortable, but dependable. Ugly, but solid.”

Steve knew he was blushing, but at least the rest of the crew was snickering. “Okay. Won’t do it again,” he said but he wasn’t sure if he was lying or not.

How could he be? His existence was a fable, so why did it matter if he lied a little more? The truth was — he was tired of being the reasonable one, tired of herding this bunch of kids who weren’t that much younger than him. He had never done that, not once in his life. He had tried to be somebody else but… No matter how much he tried to run away, he couldn’t run away from himself. Light years away from home and he still made the same mistakes. Tony sometimes hated him for being too uptight — for wanting the team to train, for wanting the team to know what they were doing — and sometimes for being too reckless, for enjoying himself. He was always stepping on landmines. He looked up, at the vast void of space and sighed. He’d never understand Tony Stark, but he knew he had to try. They were stuck together. They had to make it work.

After dinner, he knew what he had to do. He waited until everybody else had left and went to the cockpit. Tony was curled in the pilot’s seat, doing the night shift instead of Rhodes. His blanket was a red-and-gold quilt that looked old but well-taken care of and his dark, deep brown eyes reflected the stars around them.

“We’re almost there,” Tony said when Steve’s footsteps broke the silence. “We’ve almost reached our destination.”

“Good. Strange’s going insane.”

Tony laughed. “I know. But don’t you understand? When we get there, we’re… we’re going to see aliens. Real alive aliens.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Steve said with a smile. He sat next to Tony and waited for Tony to kick him out. But Tony didn’t — he kept staring out the window, his eyes focused somewhere far away.

“Do you… like it here?” Tony said.

Steve laid back on his seat and closed his eyes. The engines were thrumming and everybody was getting ready to sleep. He knew what they were doing. Natasha was tip-toeing into the library and grabbing some of those romance novels she pretended nobody knew she read, Bruce was still in his lab, Strange and Clint were talking about cults and sleight-of-hand in the rec room. Laura and Rhodes were already sleeping, tired after a hard day. He knew those sounds and he knew the way the ship smelled. Motor oil, sweat, and coffee — the smell of Tony.

“Food’s fine, bed’s good, team is even better. I couldn’t ask for more,” he finally said.

“You can always ask for more,” Tony said. “Better food. A better bed. Better teammates that don’t make a big deal about chairs. That kind of thing.”

“That’s true about the bed and the food, but I can’t ask for any better teammates,” Steve said and was surprised when he realized he meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week - ALIENS, finally!
> 
>  
> 
> _Tony nodded. “Be respectful. Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch _anybody_. We don’t want to take Space STDs to Earth.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“That was unnecessary,” Steve said._
> 
>  
> 
> _“It's not. Space STDs are a well-known risk,” Strange said sagely._
> 
>  
> 
> _Steve wondered if it was a joke._


End file.
